Building our Team - 2X

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I write this article based on the insight of the conversation that I have with my team in our monthly 1-on-1 call. I speak with each one of them and after the conversation, I write one insight. I share them in our team group chat. This article is a compilation of a full week's takeaway. You can read more about the reason for it in the article?Restart.

What is a 2-hour checkpoint??

A little bit of back story before answering the question. We at 73bit have always logged our time only to analyze it later. The purpose of logging time is never to blame or to check who is working or not working. The real purpose is to improve the quality of the work, identify waste in our process and thus add more value to our client. It is only useful for individuals to track their work and for the leader to plan the learning programs for the team members

The idea of this habit is to revisit the work every 2 hours. Take a pause and check if you are into a rabbit hole of issue or you are trying to do overwork that is not needed. The ability to deliver work as per expectation neither less nor more is what we first have to strive for. Once we cross the tipping point where we are making handsome profits we will have the luxury of time to design the client delight and deliver it on demand. Until then you have to be very focused on the delivery as per the decided expectation. It also helps you break your task into 2-hour chunks thus helping you measure your velocity of work. Once you master these skills it will be possible to predict a task that you have done in the past or similar work. In case you are unable to break the task into two-hour chunks, you must take the help of your peers or leader. Thus plan your task accordingly. Thus at every point, you are mostly only tracked on a weekly basis. When we all focus on the ability to deliver a repeated outcome on a predictable basis like we are doing in our Scrum team we as a company become stronger. A stronger company can take decisions in favour of our team and we can all enjoy well monetarily

What is the purpose of culture?

We are developing the culture to can create 10X value for the clients. This is important to all of us because once we make it happen we will get paid well by our clients. The first step of our current culture charter is to get 2X outcomes. The question arises what does 2X outcome means to you? Let's keep it simple here are 6 outcomes every one of us can measure. (a) billable hours (b) number of initiatives (c) reduction in time (d) less number of rework (e) Add to our no worklist (f) identify high leverage efforts

Some outcomes are self-explanatory. In case you need an explanation on another please let me know. for (b) the number of initiatives you have to track down the action plan, create a ticket and measure the outcome and back it using data to explain how it helped the company move forward. for (d) it means lesser or no rework, bug or sloppy work. for (e) this is a tough one to list down tasks or projects that is beyond our current capability and we should say no to our clients when they request us. These are the work that takes 3 times the time and creates a lot of pressure and frustration. for (f) these are ideas or decisions that give us more opportunities. For example, adding 1 client with 50-200 participants take the effort of about 1-2 sprint and we keep earning for the rest of the year or creating a high-end training program to teach Probench to a new member or creating a bot for some basic verification and testing of user flow is SQL is far easier than creating automated GUI testing?

The purpose of the culture is to pick any few of the outcomes and measure yourself month on month if you are making progress. There are two things that are true i) either the culture is not designed properly to 2X your current outcome individually ii) Even though every one of us is producing 2X outcome in all 6 areas and still the company is not making a profit. In either case, we need to course-correct and find the right balance between our culture that gives us the ability to create 10X for our clients and they are happy to pay about 2X to 3X fees against the benefits.?

Can we focus on only 1 pillar of culture?

For those who have still not read our culture charter https://73bit.com/Culture because they are so busy and swamped with the work that they don't have 5 minutes out of the working day to read it. Here is the main point of the 7 pillars. i) Team over individual ii) Asking for help is a smart way iii) making small progress over perfection iv) Collaboration over competition v) shared learning is superpower vi) Clear communication is clear thinking vii) Asking good quality questions. (I know the people who don't have time will not even read this). However, the purpose of the culture is to also bring out the truth and reality in open and communicate it. Remember Clear communication is our culture. Coming back to the original question can you focus on 1 pillar and become better at it and then move to the next. My recommendation for this is no, here is my explanation for doing this. Let's take an example of getting fit or healthy. You need to do multiple things for it. With common sense wisdom, it's a lifestyle change. You need to eat healthily, move your body, have a good night's sleep, have less stress in life, have plenty of water, good relationship and 30 other things. The funny part is if one thing doesn't bring a consistent change. You can get lucky for the first month of weight loss but that will not continue the next month. However, if you apply the small change in each part and gradually improve it over the months you will see the outcome in 6 months and you will also stick to the regime. So my recommendation is to focus on each pillar and make tiny improvements in each. I am not suggesting that you will not see progress by picking only 1 area, but it will take more effort for the results you gain.?

Let me share another analogy to make sense of my suggestion. It's a tool called as wheel of life. so convert each pillar into a pie of a wheel for example see this image. Now imagine if each one of us is a 1 wheel each of the vehicles called as 73bit. Our goal is to move forward effortlessly and gain 2X revenue. Our ability to apply each pillar at work is marked as the blue shade of the image. Now imagine such crooked wheels are added to a vehicle how much effort and push a team needs to take it forwards. There will be a few wheels that are in better shape and take more responsibility to take the vehicle ahead. I think this is the reason it is told that the team's speed is measured by the speed of its weakest link. Now if the weakest link becomes a smaller wheel so that it either sits at the end and gives the frictionless motion or in between and gets out of other ways. The more it becomes stronger at one pie creates more friction and helps the team. I know metaphors are difficult to apply in reality but pick any 1 outcome and if the entire team decides to measure only one outcome which is the profitable billable task and everyone gets around to doing it as applicable to each one's role we can guarantee results month on month. As a team, we have an example without the Sprint cycle. It's completely on auto-mode and we know levers to pull to speed it up or slow it down.?

How can I ask questions let alone good quality questions when I don't know much about the task or project?

I stand on the complete opposite spectrum on this question. The question only comes when you are unclear, unknown or unskilled. In one of my previous questions, I have mentioned that to come up with a good question start with at least 100 bad questions and try to qualify them personally. Your main fear of not asking the question is fear of judgement. In order to overcome it, you have to take a tiny risk of asking and flagging that you are asking a silly question then confirm with your lead or peer that was it a silly question or a valuable question. I have already shared the difference between good questions and good quality questions you can read them in the previous Q&A.?

Today I want to establish the fact that how not knowing about the task makes you the best person to ask questions. Here is a simple method I would recommend. Take a pen and paper. Yes, you will have to use it in order to create an impact on this method. Sit in a quiet place and write down all the questions that come to your mind. You will end up writing 5-7 questions. How can I predict that? Give it a try and sit for 15 minutes and let me know if you were unable to hit the number. I would love to know. Because there is a scientific reason I should be accurate in my prediction. Once you do that get back to your work and after your 2-hour checkpoint. Review the question and see if you can add more to it. You should be able to add a couple of more. Now go to work and find the answer to your question by yourself. For those, you find the answers make a note. Makes sure you ask the question with some example to show so that you are at least clear about your question and the possible work you need to do. You will get answers or clarification on your question. Here you being wrong is your victory because that means you did not end up doing work that would ultimately need rework before delivering to the client. Also at the same time in the follow-up call verify the answer you have discovered yourself. Thus making sure you are managing your expectations. There is less surprise between what you are going to deliver and what your lead is expecting. In Indian society, the idea that "I don't know" is an answer is never taught to us. However, there are places where you make more money for being wrong these are the kind of work which is called strategy, thinking, planning, preparing, designing, discussing and analyzing. These are high paid jobs because not everyone wants to do them however everyone can learn to do them.?

Let me leave you with an example. The power of a good question can create a larger impact beyond anyone's imagination. In one of the mob programming, a question was asked "Why can't we load the JavaScript file later?" On further investigation, we were able to improve the page load performance of our product Probench by 50%. It use to take 20-25 seconds and now it takes about 10 seconds. We have never been able to improve the performance in the past 2 years that this 1 question enables us to do in 2 hours. It's a life skill you may want to learn.

How to create interest when a new work or role is assigned?

I thought this question is so silly at first but after the call, I saw it in a different light, new work can mean many things. It can mean a change to a career path, it can mean a new area of the product, it can mean a new programming language, it can mean presenting in a client meeting, it can mean doing high-level work, it can mean performing a task with 4X outcome, it can mean repurpose of our product, it can mean learn leadership, it can mean cultivating a new habit. It means any kind of change and in the world of IT the only constant changes.?

Here is my advice, start with your strengths. Find your existing skills and qualities that can be used out of the box in your new work/role. Communicate it to your lead and tell them how they can use it to produce predictable results. Take the first few tasks that is an easy win for you and establish the trust that you are valuable to the team. Next up is all the things that you are weak at or you dislike. Create a learning path so that you can improve on it within a defined time frame. Set up an expectation of what is not acceptable to them and what is the area where they predict you will make mistakes. If your lead cannot predict your mistakes it's on them not you. That's the conservative path of the transition.?

Let me share some proactive methods. You have to keep your curiosity, learning and gamify work on. You may already know what curiosity and learning mean and how to keep it on. The gamify of work means you set up some internal metric that can help you track your progress in transition. It means you have to be attentive in catching signals from your leads and peers on your mistakes. It means you have to be more helpful and resourceful towards your team. Doing the task to tick the box and doing it for the sake of doing it will not help you. You have to become a better team player because that's our culture. At times it may mean that you stand, up and tell that you are not fit for the role or to lead and make ways for people who can do better at that job. You may find a different role here or somewhere else. It's difficult to talk about sensitive topics and it's also true that you stick around in a bad work relationship is not good for either party.?

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