Continuous Value Delivery in a WFH World: 5 things to try

The times they are a changing, and changing everyday it seems.

In today’s ever evolving business landscape, people and companies with the ability to be flexible in the way they problem solve and prioritize what is truly important, can redefine “good enough” and are able to realize the maximum amount of customer value out of fluid capacity in these less than ideal conditions are more likely to be able to successfully weather these turbulent times.

Many companies are quickly finding that they are faced with unforeseen problems that they never could have imagined and have no plan for or know how to solve. Things as simple as “How do we enable our teams to “work together” when everyone is at home?”. “How are we going to collaborate on ideas when we are not face to face?”. “How do I deliver on the commitment we made to our bosses (customers, board members, students, friends)? “How much or how little is this going to impact us?”. The concerns are endless.

While there are no easy answers, there are experts out there who are working on these and many other problems. Here are some of the things they are suggesting you try. While they may not completely remove the problem, the intention is to improve your situation even if just a little.

5 Things to help maintain focus in a meeting or working session:

1. Break full day and half day events into smaller time boxes spread out over multiple back to back days – It is easier to stay focused on complex work for shorter amounts of time.

2. Leverage a well defined agenda and time boxes – When your session flows it helps to sustain focus.

3. Reduce the number of goals or objectives for a session – Reduce the number of problems you are trying to solve in any one session to allow for higher quality outputs.

4. Have a working agreement and share it with all of the participants at the start of the session. Sharing a common set of rules will allow for less disruption to the work.

5. Bring a scribe to capture notes. By allowing everyone to participate the results will be better informed.

5 Things you can try to enhance communication & collaboration when planning:

1. Open a team text via cell phone for a quick way to call for help or ask a question - keep it open for work day hours. Open one for the various teams you work with instead of looking through the corporate directory to see if someone is online – keep solutions simple and familiar. 

2. Open a team video conference on a regular schedule ( ie; every other day, every day, 2 x per week ) where you agree to meet and work on whatever needs to get done and still chat and joke as if you were sitting in the office. Remove the uncertainty around when you will be able to work “with” your team again and not alone

3. Learn a new skill – partner with a teammate on work to learn from each other.

4. When planning with partners, vendors, SMEs, leaders or anyone who may have limited time but valuable information for the teams planning, try to work out ways to make them available for questions on a schedule or in an audio/video conference room and give a shorter vision statement.

5. Creative team building events like online poker, FPS, or in a shared work space for brainstorming. Teams that find a way to stay close benefit from enhanced communication.

5 Things to consider when improving any situation:

1. Be clear on your objective. The clearer your destination, the easier your journey.

2. Understand your condition – it is always easier to work towards a goal when you know where you are starting from.

3. Chart your path – complex problems require complex solutions and a plan to get you there. The most important step is your next one.

4. Experiment towards improvement. No one has all the answers, some of us are just good at failing our way towards success. Don’t be afraid to try things to improve your situation, there is more to learn from a failure than there is from a success. Keep in mind that it is not about trying things for the sake of trying things. Each experiment will, ideally, have a hypothesis, an experiment, a measure and a conclusion.

5. Reach out for help. We are all in this together and together we will all get through this. 

#AgileStrong #communication #collaboration #teams #teamwork