Here is a popular Zen joke: A Zen student goes to a temple and asks how long it would take to achieve enlightenment were they to join the sanctuary. The Zen Master answers, “10 years.” The student then asks, “What if I study diligently, work especially hard, and double my efforts?” “20 years,” replies the Master.
I love the quote from Lincoln. It is going into my 'Book of Wisdom' today. One thing I think I've done a good job as a leader has been to teach my direct reports and their teams not to mistake effort for progress and that by working on less stuff, they will get more done. It took me a while to convince them of this. When I took over this team six years ago, I asked all the managers to put together a list of everything they were working on and who was the lead. When I tallied things up, each person had an average of 12 projects or initiatives assigned to them. I taught them an over-simplified version of Little's Law (the more work in progress a system has, the longer it takes to get things done) and how to prioritize work using a Kanban system. Over the next several months, throughput increased and the lead time for new projects decreased. Not surprisingly, many of the team members thanked me and said they were less stressed out or worried about missing deadlines. We're not perfect my any means. Every one in a while, something hits us like stomping on a line of ants in the sand that sends us scattering in all directions. But give us a few hours to let the dust settle, and we're soon lining back up with a plan. Thanks for the great post today!
I love the quote from Lincoln. It is going into my 'Book of Wisdom' today. One thing I think I've done a good job as a leader has been to teach my direct reports and their teams not to mistake effort for progress and that by working on less stuff, they will get more done. It took me a while to convince them of this. When I took over this team six years ago, I asked all the managers to put together a list of everything they were working on and who was the lead. When I tallied things up, each person had an average of 12 projects or initiatives assigned to them. I taught them an over-simplified version of Little's Law (the more work in progress a system has, the longer it takes to get things done) and how to prioritize work using a Kanban system. Over the next several months, throughput increased and the lead time for new projects decreased. Not surprisingly, many of the team members thanked me and said they were less stressed out or worried about missing deadlines. We're not perfect my any means. Every one in a while, something hits us like stomping on a line of ants in the sand that sends us scattering in all directions. But give us a few hours to let the dust settle, and we're soon lining back up with a plan. Thanks for the great post today!
Thank you, David. Great comment.
Are the visual cues in your Kanban system in publicly visible spaces? Or simply on desktop displays?
No, just desktop in Trello. We use it to managing our individual team projects, not company-wide.