Seeing the Invisible - What Can Be Seen Gets Done

There's an old adage that says, "A blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then." It means that even if people are ineffective or misguided, sometimes they can still succeed due to chance or luck. While sometimes true, it's not a sound practice to live by, especially when it comes to getting work done.

 Work that is visual gets done. When it's hidden behind papers, desktop windows or somewhere on a notepad there's a good chance something important will get missed or something of lesser priority will get done out of order. This is common in the office. How do we make work visible when it's essentially a bunch of 0s and 1s within desktops, laptops and servers that travel over Wi-Fi and fiber optic wires? Does it even apply in the office scenario?

 The answer is yes and there are many ways to do it. Daily prioritized to do lists. A board with To Do, Doing, Done sections using a Kanban approach to pull work through. There are even digital means such as Trello, Mural and Miro that allow you to create digital boards. They have a place. However, after trying all of these, I found it difficult to stick with them. Although I did find that I was crossing a lot more stuff off my to do lists or crumpling up "done" Post-Its?, I didn't see a significant increase in my ability to get the right work done or know if I was on schedule.

 After studying and reflecting on the situation, I discovered there was an answer to my problem in what I had learned from others. Project Management: The Menlo Way workshop hosted by Menlo Innovations exposed me to robust yet simple work visualization like setting physical constraints on available time to do work. A Visual Management workshop facilitated by the Lean Enterprise Institute taught me, among other things, that visuals should evoke action using minimal explanation. A few book provided some inspiration such as Joy, Inc., Getting the Right Things Done, Creating an Effective Management System and Design for Operational Excellence. Each speak about visuals and how they foster getting the right work done, in the right order, on time and so on.

 I found there are five questions that need to be answered; however, I was not able to answer them consistently with my attempts at managing my work.

1.      What should I be working on and how long should it take?

2.      What should I work on next?

3.      What's my availability to accept work without overloading my schedule?

4.      How do I know if I'm on track?

5.      How do I ensure my work doesn't get lost in the shuffle?

 Enter the Work Authorization Board (WAB). It has helped me to answer these questions because its visual, physical and based on standards that are supported by self-discipline.

There are three standards that I currently use. They revolve around setting limits. I know we want to accomplish it all. However, without limits, we'll say yes to everything and continue getting very little done.

1.      Only work that is written down and estimated gets done

2.      Limit work that can be scheduled and prioritized

3.      Time is blocked on calendar

 What should I be working on how long should it take? Standard #1 helps to answer this question. Pieces of work are aligned to current objectives and written down on various sizes of Post-It? notes. The size of a note correlates to the estimated time to complete that work. A 2x2 note is 15 minutes, a 2x4 is 30 minutes and a 4x4 is 60 minutes. The max time is intentional so that I don’t focus on any one piece of work for more than 1 hour and allows me to take short 3-5 minutes breathers (built into estimates) after intense focus.

 What should I work on next? There isn't a specific standard that applies here. Pieces of work are ordered by priority, top to bottom, left to right. Once work is pulled into the Daily WAB*, it's worked in FIFO order. This also help to avoid time loss due to task switching.

 What's my availability accept work without overloading my schedule? There are a few physical attributes of the board that make this possible.

 ·      If there is white space on the board, then I have availability to take on new work, so long as it aligns with my objectives

·      Each daily column on the board will only physically fit 8 hours of work

·      Each week has one overtime column that holds up to 8 hours of work

·      In total, I can only physically place 48 hours' worth of work in a given week

·      Meetings, prep time, personal development, etc. count as work and go on the board. They are not in addition to

 This helps to prevent the "Sorry son, I can't push you on the swing after dinner because I have to keep working so I don't get behind." or "I can't go pick up groceries at that time." or "nope, I can't play in golf league tonight because I have to use that time to work ahead, you know, just in case."

 Standard #3 is critical here. I can schedule all of the work I want on the WAB. If I don't have a corresponding item in my Outlook calendar, then to others I look available and they are quick to schedule meetings with that time. I intentionally leave some time open for meetings.

 How do I know if I'm on time? At the end of each workday, its respective column on the board should be empty, meaning all the work on the Daily WAB* has an X through it. If not, it goes back up into the respective days column. The board is groomed and the Overtime column used to provide capacity (and space) to clear work and allow everything to be shifted. If that's not possible, a secondary need arises where stakeholders need to be engaged about deadlines and priority. Thankfully, that hasn't happened yet.

 *Side note, this board is a single day version of the WAB that sits on parts of my desk. Each morning I pull work onto it. The differences you'll see is that there are spaces for 11 hours of activity. The extra space allows for lunch and optional overtime. The latter is where work items from the Overtime column on the WAB are moved.

 How do I keep work from getting lost in the shuffle? The board is physical and in an easily visible location. It can't hide unless I were to place a large object in front of it. It requires me to physically place tasks on it. I must physically take work from it and move it to my Daily Work Authorization Board. (Hopefully by now you've caught on to the physical theme going on.)

Rest assured, this system isn't perfect. In the spirit of continuous improvement, I have a few ideas yet to try.

 Since beginning this process, I start each week with a newfound confidence that I can get my work done without unnecessarily sacrificing time with my family or from my hobbies. I am able to finish each day knowing I got done what I needed to instead of hoping I did. I'm more focused on one piece of work at a time and complete it with higher quality. I don't start dreading Monday on Sunday afternoon. I look forward to it.

Do I expect I'll be able to meet the standards I've set 100%. Not with the nature of my work. I do expect to strive for 100%. My estimates can be incorrect. Urgent matters come up. Unexpected things happen. Because I have a process for managing my work I can study, adjust, plan and do it better next time.

 Conclusion: Make your office work visual and physical. Develop a system that speaks to you and informs you how you're doing at a glance without running a report. Create standards to support it. Yours might be different from mine and probably should be. They need to apply to your business context. It will feel awkward at first and probably tough to stick with it. That's where self-discipline comes in handy. This brings to mind a quote that goes something like "the only way to be great at anything is to make decisions against yourself." This doesn't mean make bad decisions or ones that impede your progress. It means that if we want to be great at something or achieve a new capability or skill, we must choose to work on developing that skill instead of watching 3 hours of Netflix. We must choose to be disciplined to the process of learning. In this case, you'll have to choose to stick to your standards even when you want to revert back to the old way because of the curve balls that will inevitably come your way. You won't always get it right, but, like Vince Lombardi said "If we chase perfection we can catch excellence."