Leading Exponential Change
Page 19
At this stage, put aside conversations about role changes in the company, as this is an extensive topic and one of the biggest threats to the brain, producing unconscious fear and potentially hindering the initiative’s traction. If necessary, plan future sessions where everyone can express their fears about role changes. You can also use virtual tools to make questions and answers visible to employees.
The next step is to focus on actions for achieving success: How should behaviors change? This also requires that you determine the minimum changes in behavior for creating the desired impact.
Here you will talk about the desired behaviors and barriers to the change of habits. There may be a lack of physical conditions (tools, offices, etc.) or there may be procedures, incongruous habits, or emotions related to past events. Do not forget that these will be discovered as you carry out experiments. Once several points of view are shared, ask one last question to reinforce the previous ideas: What experiment or simple task could be performed to confirm whether that minimum impact is viable?
These answers can offer an initial perspective as to where to start, determine whether any of the participants have experiences in similar situations, or even change the initial draft of the change plan. It could also reveal barriers to be removed, new people to include in the conversation, or a Backlog to create with small experiments. In short, these are the questions you could use:
Identify the initiative’s purpose and goal: Why is it important that we head in this direction?
Then focus on the people who need to change: Who will be affected to achieve the goal?
Next, focus on the minimum change in behaviors that would achieve that impact: How should behaviors change?
Finally, you should answer this question: What experiment or simple task could be performed to confirm whether that minimum impact is viable?
Once you have finished these sessions, everyone should have a shared understanding of the problem and the group commitment to take the first steps toward the transformation.
As you can see, Impact Mapping is a good way to start pre-liftoff work, because it produces quick results, identifies people and desired behaviors in a structured way, makes the strategy and value proposition visible, and specifies required capabilities or resources before taking the first steps. You will soon see how to connect the results obtained here with an A5 canvas so that the objectives of the first experiments can be understood, measured, and improved by all.
Making Boundaries and Interactions Visible
Because a Transformation Team has external members, the characteristics and abilities of its members should be visible at all times. The limits and interactions map is a simple and effective tool for identifying those who can help.
The map is usually constructed on a flipchart sheet and includes people’s photos, characteristics, and personal skills. You can also add contact information such as email addresses and phone numbers. In addition to areas of expertise, it’s important to mention both hard and soft skills that could benefit the team.
FIGURE 6.3: Limits and interactions map
Remind members to regularly update their profiles on the interaction map. New members must be familiar with the map and understand it within their first days at the office.
Establishing Explicit Working Agreements
For a Transformation Team to do its job well, its members should have solid foundations for their day-to-day behaviors, as well as positive interactions. They must know how to make difficult decisions, use techniques that increase transparency, and know how to behave in situations of high stress or uncertainty.
Each time you organize a session, prepare a clear agenda that informs participants of attendance requirements, duration, logistics, participants, roles, and expected results.
Explicit working agreements should be created during the first meetings of a Transformation Team, because they help core members and ambassadors to have a common starting point to begin collaborative work.
Table 6.1 shows examples of working agreements from teams I have helped:
Values
Working Agreements
Visibility
When something important changes, we will inform the rest of the group within 30 minutes.
Deliver powerful messages
We use powerful stories, descriptions, and analogies.
Support
We always support one another.
Speak from the heart
Instead of jargon, we use simple and clear language that everyone understands.
Ethical feedback
We are always open to feedback. If someone receives information regarding a team member, they should be informed ASAP.
Share knowledge
We regularly work in pairs within the team and with others outside our group.
Practice what we preach
We practice what we preach.
Table 6.1: Example of values and working agreements of Transformation Teams
As you can see, values are presented along with working agreements. While the former provides inspiration, the latter offers concrete attitudes. Working agreements are sometimes more specific and indicate actual daily habits.
Once in Mexico, a Transformation Team proposed that no one eat at the work table if their food had a strong smell and that mobile phones should be silent during meetings. If a phone rang at a meeting, its owner had to enter one dollar into a piggy bank, and the money was donated to charity at the end of the year.
To create explicit working agreements, you must start with one or more collaborative sessions with the core team to help determine the desired values and habits. Because the extended team will also be governed by the agreements, you should give them the opportunity to offer feedback.
Values and working agreements are not static, so it’s necessary to establish techniques to amend and improve them. When a new member joins the team, the agreements must be updated, because each person brings something unique and usually alters the dynamics of the group.
Using a Roadmap and Objectives
At some point, the Transformation Team will have a vision of the change or product and a high-level roadmap. This will contain a timeline with information on the impact you want to achieve in each work cycle. Examples of these objectives are an increase in the quality of a service, a reduction in the number of after-hours emergencies, an increase in sales, and a specific impact on the client or employees.
But this roadmap won’t help if we aren’t fully aware of where we stand. Therefore, each work-cycle objective must have objective tests consisting of simple, quantifiable metrics that make it possible to assess the situation and know if the goal has been met. They allow us to align expectations and determine if we are on the right path or need to modify the approach.
During a work cycle, we must achieve small goals that contribute to the overall objective of the work cycle. It’s here missions are required so we know what to achieve in the coming days, as opposed to one week, two weeks, or a month. Keep in mind that a single work-cycle objective is composed of several missions.
A mission is a small goal created by those who will perform the work. It allows them to know whether a step has been taken successfully—or not. A mission is always quantifiable and it helps keep people motivated and focused when it’s impossible to see around the corner. A mission focuses on what to achieve but not on the how. This is so that people can discover the tasks to be completed during the work cycle, not before. A mission is not a detail of tasks to be performed but rather a set of small goals to be achieved.
The f
ollowing are mission examples:
Reduce process steps from ten to four.
Provide team A with larger monitors within the next five days.
Help team B move closer to team A.
Ensure that the new micro-habit increases customer satisfaction from 4 to 4.2.
Once missions for the next few days have been created, establish their benefits.
FIGURE 6.4: Missions and their benefits
Mission benefits consist of a list that indicates what you want to learn or what positive habits people want to acquire during a mission.
These are some examples:
Learn how to place a logistics order.
Learn how to install Jenkins in one morning.
Learn two techniques for conducting user interviews.
Reduce the time to fill applications from three days to two days.
When the benefits of a mission are mostly related to learning and self-development, people need time to reflect on the positive things that have been achieved as a group, as well as those areas yet to be improved.
Using an A5 Canvas
The A5 canvas is collaborative tool that can help a Transformation Team maximize the impact of a change initiative. The tool provides visibility so people can focus on the small experiments and identify the impact and the associated objective or mission. This canvas also helps the Transformation Team determine the need for such things as training and coaching.
I created this simple tool years ago, and I must confess that I have used it not only during transformations but also in almost any business situation that requires taking small steps and learning. The A5 canvas helps people see everything they undertake as a hypothesis that must be validated and result in specific learning. It focuses conversation on the following:
Desired impact.
Metrics.
Needs and learning opportunities.
Making it easy to focus on continuous improvement.
In the upper-left corner of Figure 6.5, participants should write down the current situation. Talking about it reinforces that sought-after initial shared alignment. In the upper-right corner, record the near-future desired impact or behavior. This must be specific and quantifiable.
FIGURE 6.5: A5 canvas
In the lower-left section, indicate a small plan for a couple of days: a goal or hypothesis we want to demonstrate (for example: Using technique X will increase the delivered value of business to the client by 10%).
Finally, in the lower-right section, indicate the deadline for the experiment and the evaluation of its success, as well as metrics for evaluation. The beauty of this visual tool is that it allows everyone to do the following:
Talk about how they see the current situation.
Focus on the impact.
Determine needs (coaching, training, etc.).
Create clear objectives (strategy).
Set a common goal (hypothesis).
Establish deadlines and metrics.
At the end of the work cycle, members can easily verify if the goal has been reached, the hypothesis has been checked, or if they require a new iteration. In case of the latter, you can use the same sheet to show the strategy improvement in each work cycle.
I have been successful using the A5 canvas with teams and people who see and evaluate change as something linear, with individuals who use more-traditional methods, and in moments of high uncertainty. In each of these situations, this tool has helped participants maintain focus and motivation while taking ownership of the work.
Creating Explicit Principles for Liftoff
A change plan isn’t usually an isolated event but is more often part of an initiative that seeks to alter an existing service or create a new product. Preparing the liftoff agenda for an initiative is one of the activities that the Transformation Team should carry out with ease.
In general, it focuses on the following objectives:
Understand the problem, the business context, and organizational constraints.
Help create the product vision and understand the vision of change.
Make it easier for everyone to use a common vocabulary.
Develop a shared understanding of the scope.
Ensure that teams have a clear definition of business value and of nonnegotiable minimum quality (Definition of Done), as well as a single work priority.
Ensure that teams create values, principles, working agreements, and practices to carry out collaborative tasks.
Confirm that the skills for the job are available.
Have an initial strategy to help scarce resources or knowledge go from being linear to exponential.
Be aware of any uncertainty and how it could affect people during personal development.
Help people detach from anything they produced that will be discarded by the new plan.
Offer guidance and techniques that increase self-organization in times of high uncertainty.
Implement a credible plan.
Create simple metrics that make progress visible.
Provide techniques for understanding the economic cost of making one decision while delaying another.
The liftoff stage usually occupies the first weeks of the initiative. I do not include information on how to run this stage because there’s already plenty of readily available material on the topic. Nevertheless, you will find a story about the liftoff stage at the end of this chapter.
You can learn more about running the liftoff stage in Diana Larsen’s book “Liftoff: Start and Sustain Successful Agile Teams.”
Clear rules are necessary for establishing activity characteristics during liftoff meetings. The following are examples of principles for developing activities during liftoff meetings:
Any person wishing to add an activity during liftoff should know and understand the vision of change.
Whoever proposes a liftoff session must commit to delivering it—and comply (at least the first time).
Over half the Transformation Team must agree with the activity.
Only liftoff sessions with a practical purpose or that could positively influence people’s attitudes should be included.
Every activity must feed a sense of belonging and encourage the self-organization of teams.
Every liftoff session must involve at least 50% practice, and each participant must know in advance the requirements and expected results.
Remaining motionless while looking for perfection is not an option. The activities will be prepared in a short period and will be improved through repetition.
Explicit principles help to align expectations and develop effective planning in the early stages of the initiative. As with team values and work agreements, principles for a change initiative should also be checked and improved regularly.
Looking for the Right Physical Space
The Transformation Team requires space. In my experience, a closed office isn’t a good option. Look for an open area close to the people, team, or department going through the change. The physical arrangement of the space can vary from one company to another, but a large table, separate from other desks, provides a substantial advantage. It’s also a plus if the table is close to a wall, because this will allow for the display of work agreements, principles, and values.
In some companies, it isn’t possible to stick anything on the walls. You can use flipcharts or magnetic sheets during the day and remove them at night, but the team must have the information available and be able to draw during conversations. In addition, the team should have plenty of sticky notes, pens, and blank sheets of paper. Extra chairs also help people feel that they’re invited to informal talks and can stop by to ask questions.
Being close to a window is preferable, because natural light has a positive effect on interactions. You should also have a whiteboard an
d a projector for when you need to use the space as a learning room. The environment should grant everyone the opportunity to observe new forms of interaction, listen to transparent conversations, and promote learning within the company.
If you can’t procure the adequate space and environment for the Transformation Team, start with something temporary. Even a corner can be a good alternative initially!
Measuring the Results of the Transformation Team
At some point, you’ll inevitably be asked if there is concrete evidence that the business transformation effort will have a positive impact on the performance of the organization. You will have to ask powerful questions to help people discover what is to be measured and how they want to do this.
Using incorrect metrics often causes executives to lose sight of the purpose of the business, and they might begin to assess measurements related to changes in habits instead of what they should be measuring to accelerate the change. Corporate transformations are costly, and people become nervous about results in the short, medium, and long term. Large organizations often forget why the initiative is being implemented (purpose). To combat this, it’s essential to have a point of view that covers the impact over the entire business.