INSIGHTS

Toward's the Journey's End and So it has begun

Over the last couple of years, I had walked onto the path of "the existential angst". Given that an average person, who I ape across all facets of being, will spend around 90,000 hours (1/3rd of his life) at work over a lifetime, it became important to me to take a pause and make sense of the world that I had created for myself.

Basic questions like, what my mission and vision is, needed to be answered. What is it that I want to be known for, when I walk through the door and the legacy of having added some value to the people he interacts with, the communities he works in and his influence on society at large needed to be probed deeper. I am not sure I have a complete answer to these questions yet and perhaps these actions that are being taken are the steps towards exploring and formalizing a purpose and the very question of existence that plagues my mortal soul.

This ‘trigger’ convinced me that something was broken and needed to be fixed. This ‘something’ is looking at an absurd and at times meaningless world, complex and intricately woven, stuck in a bubble for survival.

What is a deep seated thought (or at least plays a part in) is to look for solutions that will add meaning beyond set success factors such as revenue, position and qualitative indicators that purely focus on shareholder value. The words of Robert Kennedy echoes in my head as he spoke of one such established indicator the GNP (Gross national product) 

“the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” - Robert Kennedy.

The ability for a person (organization, a client, a layman) to associate a term / word / brand to the notions of an inclusive system that encompasses - delighting your customers, nurturing your staff, partnering with the suppliers and channel partners, offering products and services that create moments of Hygge and of course in the process create ROI for investors, will be solved.

Return of the Jedi

I am yet to be a successful entrepreneur or the next business Van Gogh. Given that this is a journey, I am at a place where the blueprints and the foundations are getting architected. The fluidity and the honing of these foundations brings in a level of uncertainty and the ability to invest resources therefore are the tangible losses rather risks that are to be taken into consideration. But what I am hoping, is when the dust starts to settle, tomorrow will look “clear, in terms of:

Reputation: A clear Identity and association to a set of guiding principles that will be representative of the organisation.

Time: Decreased gestation periods with the ability to focus on solutions and its creation rather than spending time on defining expectations

Finances: The ability to scale and focus on value based revenue models 

Well, I am no Jedi. I am a simple average bloke who likes to dream. And it is perhaps that which gives hope. If someone as inconsequential as me can dare to try and make a change, imagine you, my dear reader, with the vision you have, what must be waiting to be unleashed!


Kanbanelism, The ‘I’ & workflow management - 看板

As in any self discovery, especially when one has spent more than half of one’s life finding oneself, its liberating to associate with studies and concepts that correspond with, what one might otherwise think are strange, unacceptable, quirky, neanderthaloid behaviour patterns. One such obvious and yet late discovery was that I am a spatial and solitary aka intra-personal learner. 

As a natural incantation to satisfy this style, I find methodologies such Kanban very attractive. I have started using it once again, from where I seem to have left it off back in 2007, in almost every area of my life including the adroit world of consulting. 

To you my reader, these thoughts articulated here are not so much about Kanban, as much as why this method works for me and my style of operating. 

In case you are not familiar with the term, suffice to say that it is a Japanese method (1950s) to organise and manage your processes as a real time repository. In principle, it starts with what you need to do now and it pursues an incremental change across a visualised process, limiting and managing the flow, implementing and improving feedback and collaboration. 

Right, back to the styles of learning. 

Visual (spatial) : You prefer using pictures, images and spatial understanding. 

Kanban visualises the work flow. A simple board with Kanban Cards (I use post-its, contributing to 3M’s P&L) that get associated to a column representing a step in the workflow. So for example if I was maintaining a “To-Do” workflow - the steps could include : Things that I need to do > The things that are in progress > Done. The possibilities are dependent on how simple or complex the workflow is. For example I could add another step in between the thing that are in progress and done called Things that are delayed, escalated or need urgent attention to deal with those pesky tasks requiring some additional mollycoddling

Use of colour, layout and spatial organisation of the cards to associate and assert work in progress limits, allows control over the tasks and its management. Limits that define conditions for moving a card from one step to the next, defined per person, per work stages or type, or for the entire work system, denoted with labels or colour codes allows you to complete single work items faster by ensuring focus on finishing current tasks before starting new ones. 

The above two also establishes a representation focused on managing the work to flow from one step to the next rather on people (a great way to navigate ego). The question asked is, what would it take to move the card to the next step in a faster, efficient, healthy and smoother way.

Solitary (Intra-personal) : You prefer to work alone and self-study:

The steps in a workflow can be a representation of the way you are tackling a problem and a process you believe will be the best way to arrive at a solution. 

This feeds into my “intra-personal” style. 

Kanban provides that flexibility to align a team or a set of people on which the process is dependent. Given the focus is on managing the workflow and the tasks, individuals responsibility is based on transparency created through familiarity of the entire process and common goal, represented on the Kanban Board.

Efficiencies to move the card brings in the power of unearthing peoples self organisational talents and will. Besides, feedback loops identify available capacity and potential increase in delivery pace. This which is evolutionary as the workflow proceeds, feeds the influence on ones performance in a creative and often safe manner. 

Yes! Yes! I know, Kanban is often used for team work and projects that require coordination between groups of people. What I highlight here is that the design of the workflow and the alignment to it is one that is driven by you where “you” are the key owner of the workflow.  

So there we are, an insight to why Kanban works for me. This therefore also insinuates that there are other methods that can work for different learning styles, which then begs the question/s - 

Do you know your style? 

Have you ever considered looking at methods that work for your individuality and person? 

Have you thought of its adoption and use?

With that I hope you too will think about what could make your life easier and create a sense of better visibility, improved efficiency and increased productivity. 

Here are some KANBAN APPs I can recommend which enhance productivity:

Cheerio! 

PERSPECTIVE - Make it a Thumb Rule

Oftentimes I like to use a simple method while discerning a situation, particularly when feeling hard-wired towards a myopic view. The method really is quite easy and would require you to line up the person you are having a difference of opinion with, in front of you. 

Now hold your thumb, facing the inside of it towards yourself and the bit with the nail towards the other person. At this point both of you should take turns to describe what you see. Chances are you will probably notice the deep lines running through it, unevenly splitting it in three parts, maybe the fascinating patterns the concentric circles make, perhaps you will look at the broadness of it, how flexible it is and so on. 

The other person (your colleague, friend or family member) will most likely tell you about the length of your nail, the shape of it, maybe if you need to trim or clean it 😊, perhaps a stray hair jutting out , the colour, the texture etc. Now this is a situation, where your thumb is being described by two people standing at different ends. 

Once done, slowly try to tilt your thumb a bit, so that you get a bit of a view of both sides and see how that changes your perception. Now go even a step further and look at the thumb in all its entirety and see how that radically changes your definition of the same object/situation. 

As a next exercise, try equating a real-life situation with your thumb, keeping in mind, that while describing it, your viewpoint was still objective, well because it’s a thumb after all. You didn’t add your two bits to it, there were no assumptions or scenarios or overthinking involved, it was a plain description and yet there were different versions of it. 

Life fortunately or unfortunately is way more multi-faceted than our thumb, and objectivity as a guiding principle mostly has no place. Yet for individuals to align, the sense of perception has to evolve and the twain have to find some common ground to make things work while respecting each other’s viewpoint. This is where the analogy of the thumb comes in handy; how you look at things is not how the other will look at it, how you describe a situation will be varied from how I do, factors which are key for you, may not necessarily mean anything to me. This is because your vision is limited in the moment and you are fixated on the side you are looking at. 

How then, does one come to an understanding? It really is quite simple, just tilt that thumb a bit, try and look at things, at least make an attempt, and see if the point the other side is making could also be valid. Perhaps sometimes for the sake of the larger good take a broader view, look at the whole thumb instead of the side you were looking at so far, and see if it changes your viewpoint. 

I leave you with a brilliant quote by Whitney Wolfe Herd

Life is about perspective and how you look at something... ultimately, you have to zoom out.