Beautiful.

In a new digital economy and a world of ultra-competition, it’s great to shape a smart organization.

We learned this long ago.   Agile was part of the early Microsoft patterns & practices DNA.   We embraced agile methods and agile management practices.

We learned that execution is king, and that shipping early and often gives you better feedback and a way to make changes in a customer-connected way.

Here is what Gartner says …

“Accepting higher project failure rates can help organizations become more efficient more quickly, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner said project and portfolio management (PPM) leaders who take a "fail-forward-fast" approach that accepts project failure rates of 20 to 28 percent as the norm will help their organizations become more agile by embracing experimentation and enabling the declaration of success or failure earlier in a project's life.”

Check out the article, Gartner Says Smart Organizations Will Embrace Fast and Frequent Project Failure in Their Quest for Agility.

In PM Network magazine, Jesse Fewell wrote a great article on Agile Downsizing? Why Agile Skills Improve a Project Manager’s Job Security.

Here are a few highlights:

“Agile wasn’t designed to improve the bottom line like that, but it’s a misconception that has some project managers worrying whether a move to ‘self-organizing’ teams would make their position redundant.  Even more concerning, many of the formal approaches, such as Scrum or Kanban, do not define a project manager role.”

Project managers are in higher demand than ever.  Fewell writes:

“PMI research shows the use of agile approaches tripled from December 2008 to May 2011, and 63 percent of hiring managers would encourage their project managers to pursue agile certification.”

It’s not doing more with less. 

Fewell shares a few skills that project leaders with agile experience can show on their resume:

Delegating more work – “Do you have a bent for process and facilitation?  Then create that well-oiled machine and groom an analyst to manage the business. The most successful project managers I’ve met have focused on their strengths, and found capable hands for the rest of the work.”

Leading more – “Agile approaches place a dogged focus on delivering business results by improving collaboration.  Once you’ve delegated the daily minutiae to the project team, you can invest in more strategic relationships.”

Driving more improvement – “… if you’ve equipped and trusted your team to handle the details and you’ve improved collaboration with stakeholders, then you finally have the energy and influence to brainstorm solutions to that quality problem, stabilize a more reliable delivery cycle than last year, or launch a product-strategy working group to mend some broken fences and get everyone on the same page.”

The key take away is this:

“The project manager with agile skills has evolved past a positional title babysitting details.  The new role is about building the capability of your teams, partnering with senior stakeholders and driving incremental improvements across the board.”

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That’s a pretty good question, and timeless, too.  

I remember several years ago, when a vendor asked me that, and I remember laughing and thinking, “yeah, that’s what we try to show other people how to do.”

What was great though, was the vendor followed up with a short-list of precise questions:

1. What is your current software development process?
2. Key milestones?
3. Release frequency?
4. Daily practices?
5. Build frequency?
6. Approach for getting / learning requirements?
7. Approach for dealing with changing / emerging requirements?
8. Approach for creating testable software? (e.g. you change the software for requirement X, how quickly can you make and verify the change)

That’s actually a really good set of questions both to quickly get a handle on your software development process and to test how “agile” you really are.

It also reveals your culture and how responsive to change and feedback you really are.

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The key shift with Agile Design is to deliver quickly while handling changes smoothly.   Instead of doing long requirements phases, and heavy documentation up front, with Agile Design you focus on incremental and iterative delivery, going from low-fidelity to high-fidelity, while getting feedback and improving your design.

Here are 10 ways to make Agile Design more effective:

1. Avoid BUFD – Big Up-front Design.  Avoid it.  Whenever there is a big lag time between designing it, developing it, and using it, you’re introducing more risk.  You’re breaking feedback loops.  You’re falling into the pit of analysis paralysis.   Focus on “just enough design” so that you can test what works and what doesn’t, and respond accordingly.
2. Avoid YAGNI – You Aren’t Gonna Need It.  Avoid bloat.  At the same time, avoid scope creep.   “Keep the system uncluttered with extra stuff you guess will be used later. Only 10% of that extra stuff will ever get used, so you are wasting 90% of your time.” – Extreme Programming.org
3. Embrace Occam’s Razor and KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).  Use the simplest solution.  Simplicity always win in the long run.  This will help you stay in the game before bogging your solution down and crippling it’s ability to keep up with evolving requirements.
4. “Test-First.”   If you don’t know the criteria for what good looks like, you’ll have a hard time finishing.  You’ll also get lost among your designs, unless you clarify what your actual test-cases are.   If you keep a small set of useful tests, you can parse through a variety of designs, and find the diamonds in the rough.
5. Deliver iterative and incremental solutions.   An iterative solution would be decorating the living room.  An incremental solution would be adding a porch to the house.   Deliver useful and usable increments, and then iterate on them to improve them based on real feedback.
6. Cycle through alternatives.   Fail fast and fail often.  This is another good argument for being able to do rapid prototypes, and low-fidelity prototypes.   You need to cycle through competing solutions.   Do A/B testing.  Do the Toyota Way and create 3 alternative solutions.   Don’t get wrapped up in finding the “best solution.”  In many cases, your best solution will be found by “satisficing.”  This will keep you ahead of the game, and ready to respond to emerging requirements.
7. Stay customer-connected.  Stay connected with the users who will actually use what you’re making.   Get 5 customers to stand behind it.  Don’t just throw it over the wall down the line, and hope it sticks.  Invite your customers to your side of the wall.
8. Think Big Picture First.   Put the scaffolding in place.  Focus on the plumbing before the interior decorating.  Solve the big challenges first.   Get the big picture, before getting lost in the details.  Optimize the maxima before the minima.
9. Get cross-discipline feedback early and often.    The better you can balance cross-discipline feedback, the more reliable your solution will be.
10. Spike early and often.  Use technical spikes, functional spikes, and user experience spikes to get the risk out.

The last thing you want to do is throw a solution over the wall, and nobody wants it, or you missed the basic scenarios.   That’s why delivering early helps get the risk out, and helps validate your path.

If you’ve ever watched people argue over how they “satisfied the requirements”, but nobody wants to use it, you know exactly what I mean.  People don’t always know exactly what they want, or, even if they do, it’s hard to articulate in a way, that everybody gets it.  But people are way better at recognizing what they like, and knowing whether or not they like something when they actually use it.

Embrace it.

That’s what Agile Design does – it embraces the reality that people get more clarity over time of what good really looks like.

Creating an early feedback loop also forces you to keep your solution easy to maintain and easy to evolve.  Otherwise, it’s very easy to cement your design, and no longer respond to emerging needs.  The key to lasting solutions is they are built to change.

It’s a process of continuous learning and continuous delivery.

One of my mentees was looking for ways to grow her prowess in “Inspiring a Vision.”  

Here are some of the ways I shared with her so far:

• Future Picture - One of the best ways that the military uses to create a shared vision rapidly and communicate it down the line is “Future Picture”  (See How To Paint a Future Picture.)

The key with vision is, when possible –

1. Draw your vision – make it a simple picture
2. Use metaphors – metaphors are the fastest way to share an idea
3. Paint the story - what’s the current state, what’s the future state
4. Paint the ecosystem – who are the players in the system, what are the levers, what are the inputs/outputs
5. Paint the story over time … how does time change the vision … and chunk up the vision into 6 month, 1 year, 3 year, five year

And, a powerful tool we use at Microsoft is a Vision / Scope document.

Sometimes the best way to do something well, is to know what to avoid.  In Ex-Windows Boss Steve Sinofsky: Here's Why I Use An iPhone, Nicholas Carlson shares some tips from Steve Sinofsky on analyzing the competition:

1. Don't use the product in a lightweight manner
2. Don't think like yourself
3. Don't bet competitors act similarly (or even rationally)
4. Don't assume the world is static

Sinofsky elaborates, and says to use the product deep, and use it over time.  Use the product like it was intended by the designers.  Wrap yourself around the culture, constraints, resources, and more of a competitor.  And, don't take a static view of the world -- the competitor can always update their product based on feedback, or weaknesses you call out.

I’m a fan of anticipating the future, and creating the future.  Even speculation helps dream up what’s possible, and be ready for anything, when it happens.  And if you balance that with key trends, you can really stay on top of things.

After all, what’s The Art of the Long View teach us?  While we can’t predict the future, we can better prepare for it by playing out the “what if” scenarios and possibilities.

With that in mind, I did a search on Microsoft secret stuff, and found some interesting things.  After all, Microsoft spends more on R&D than Google and Apple combined.

Here are some of the more interesting articles I found:

• Meet Microsoft, the world’s best kept R&D secret
• XBox Surface: Microsoft's 7-inch gaming tablet
• Microsoft's 'Secret' Projects That Will Completely Rock Your World
• Windows XP Retiring In Time For Microsoft Glasses
• Xbox leak reveals Kinect2, augmented reality glasses

Here are my key take aways …

• Holodeck - transform your family space into a something like Star Trek’s famous holodeck.
• Kinect Glasses (Fortaleza) - wearable peripherals and augmented reality.
• Xbox Surface – a 7-inch Xbox tablet.

Kinect Stuff

• Kinect Fusion - create interactive 3D models.
• KinectTrack - a new six degree-of-freedom (6-DoF) tracker which allows real-time and low-cost pose estimation using only commodity hardware.
• SuperKid - Use Kinect to make movies: watch yourself against a virtual background, and interact with virtual props.

Touch and Touch Screens

• LightSpace - create interactive displays on everyday objects.
• OmniTouch - displays graphical images onto virtually any surface and transform the projection into an interactive, multi-touch-enabled input.
• Sidesight - expand a mobile device's multi-touch capabilities beyond the size of its screen.
• SkinPut - beam interactive displays onto your hand and arm
• Thinsight - a hardware and software product that allows ordinary LCD screens to become fully functional multi-point touchscreens.

More …

• Digits - translate a user’s hand movements directly into a virtual space.
• Foveated Rendering - accelerate graphics computation by a factor of 5-6 on a desktop HD display, by exploiting the fallout of acuity in the visual periphery.

What neat stuff do you see Microsoft working on?

How do you create career opportunities?   You reinvent yourself.

While you can always hope for things to land in your lap, there are specific patterns I see successful people do.  Among those that continuously create the best career opportunities, here are the key success patterns:

1. They invest in themselves.  They’re always learning, and taking some sort of training, beyond their day job.
2. They reinvent themselves.  As a result of investing in themselves, they grow new capabilities.   With their new capabilities, they expand the opportunities they can easily plug themselves into.  For example, a few of my friends started to focus on data science in anticipation of big data, as one of the key trends for 2013 and beyond.  As part of re-inventing themselves, they re-brand themselves to better showcase what they’re bringing to the table.
3. They build connections before they need them.  It’s always been a game of who you know and what you know, but now more than ever, your network can be the difference that makes the difference when it comes to finding out about relevant opportunities.
4. They know who’s job they want.   They have a role-model or two that already does the job they want.  The role-model exemplifies how they want to show up, how they want to spend their time, and through that role-model they learn the types of challenges they want to take on, and they get better perspective on what the life-style is actually like.  This not only helps them get clarity on the type of job they want, but it helps when they tell other people the kind of job they want, and can point to specific examples.
5. They know the market.   They pay attention to where the action is.   They don’t just follow their passion.  They follow the money, too, to know where the growth is, and where there’s value to be captured.  As the saying goes, every market has niches, but not every niche has a market.
6. They have a mentor, and a “board of directors.”   They use a circle of trusted advisors that can help clue them into where to grow their strengths, and how to find better opportunities, based on what they’re capable of.   It might be their “wolf pack”, but more often than not, it’s a seasoned mentor or two that has great introspection, and can see what they can’t, and they can help them to see things from a balcony view.  Most importantly, the sharp mentors, the wise and able ones, help them to know their Achilles heal, and get past glass ceilings, and avoid career limiting moves.
7. They have a sponsor.  Like a game of Chutes and Ladders, skilled sponsors help them find the short-cuts, avoid the dead ends, and avoid sliding backwards.

If you’re wondering where the best career opportunities are, sometimes it’s the job you’ve already got, sometimes you have to go find them, and sometimes, you have to make them.

What do Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Walt Disney teach us about building a culture of innovation?

A lot.

I put together a comprehensive collection of innovation quotes.   And by comprehensive, I mean more than 100 of the greatest thoughts on innovation, all at your finger tips.   You’ll hear from Edison, Mozart, Michael Porter, Peter Drucker, Seth Godin, and more.

And, to make the innovation quotes more meaningful, I’ve grouped them into useful categories, so you can flip through the sections you care about the most.   There’s a section on Action, Birthing Ideas, and Continuous Learning and Growth.  You’ll also find a section on Fear and Failure.  After all, success in innovation is often a numbers game.  Remember what Edison taught us.

Just because it’s a comprehensive collection of innovation quotes, doesn’t mean it’s complete, or that it’s a done deal.  There’s always room for improvement (and innovation.)  So if you have some favorite innovation quotes that I’ve left out, please let me know.  I want this collection to be truly insightful, and most importantly, actionable.

After all, what good are good ideas, if you can’t turn them into results.

And that’s the truth about innovation.

Enjoy.

This past January, more than 20,000 people got the book that’s changing lives, and changing the workplace:

Getting Results the Agile Way:  A Personal Results System for Work and life

You’re going to want to read this if you want to level up in work and life, or share it with a friend you know that you want to help give the edge.

I’m going to walk through how I use Agile Results  to show you how YOU can seriously and significantly amplify your impact, get better performance reviews, and spend more time doing what YOU enjoy.  (So, while this post might seem all about me, it’s really about you.)

I’m not going to make it look easy.  I’m going to make it real.  I care way more that you get the full power of the system in your hands so you can do amazing things and get exponential results.   Agile Results is not a fly-by-night.   It was more than ten years in the making.

Keep in mind, it’s an ultra-competitive world, and what you don’t know can hurt you.  On the flip side, what you do know can instantly boost your creativity, productivity, and impact in unfair ways.

Use Agile Results as your unfair advantage.

Now then, let’s roll up our sleeves and get to it.  But first, some context …

I use Agile Results as a personal productivity and time management system. 

In one line, it's my "personal results system for work and life." 

I also use it to lead distributed teams around the world.  I use it to drive high-impact projects, and for projects at home. 

This post is a detailed walkthrough of how I use Agile Results as a time management and productivity system for making things happen.

Before we dive into the details, I want to make an important point ...

The simplest way I use Agile Results is as follows:

I write down Three Wins that I want to accomplish for the day on paper.

Yes, that’s it, and it is that simple (to at least, that’s how simple it is to start using Agile Results.)

If ever I get off track (and I do), the simple way I get back on track with Agile Results, is I simply write down my three wins for the day, down on a piece of paper.  Agile Results is both forgiving and instantly useful.

The main goal of Agile Results is to help me spend more time where it counts.  I needed a light-weight and flexible system that I could use for myself or for others.  For several years, I had to build up a new team every six months.  I needed to build high-performance teams under the gun, as quickly as possible.  And, at the same time, I wanted work to be a place of self-expression, where you live your values, give your best where you have your best to give, and experience flow and continuous learning on a regular basis.

I needed to get "Special Forces" results, from individuals, and from the larger team.  So I needed a system that could stretch to fit ... either scale up for a team, or simply help an individual get exponential results.  I wanted it to be based on timeless and self-evident principles, rather than tools or fads.  And I wanted it to "play well with others" ... where if somebody already had an existing system, or favorite tools, Agile Results could just ride on top and help them get more of what they already use.

Above all, it had to be as simple as possible.

Having a system that’s as simple as possible, helps support you while you do the impossible.

With that in mind, let's dive in.  So here is how I use Agile Results ...

Daily Startup Routine

My favorite startup routine is:

1. Wake up
2. Throw on my shoes and run for 30 minutes
3. Take a shower
4. Eat breakfast slow
5. Take the back way to work, play my favorite songs, and figure out my three wins for the day

It's a simple routine.  I've learned that one of the keys is carving out time for what's important, first thing in the morning.  What I like about this routine is that it's not chaotic.  It's serene by design.  I've had chaotic startup patterns.  This is the one that I purposefully made the morning about exercising, eating, and setting the stage for a great day.  I don't turn on the TV.  I don't watch the news.  I don't check my computer.  All of that can wait until I'm in the office. 

It's how I charge up.

Monday Vision

Monday is all about vision for the week. 

For example, if the week were over, and you were looking back, what would be the three big things you want under your belt?

It's such a simple thing, but I make the most of the week, by starting with what I want out of the week.  On Monday mornings, my main starting point is Three Wins for the Week.  I identify the top Three Wins that would make this week great.  To do so, I jump ahead and imagine that if this was Friday, what would I want to rattle off as my three wins under my belt.  I do this on my way to work, while listening to my favorite songs.  I play around with possibilities.  I think of what big wins would look like.  I also think about the big, hairy problems need attention.  I try to balance between addressing pain, and acting on opportunities.

If I really get stuck, I try to think of the top three things that are top of mind that really need my attention.  If I'm going to invest the next week of my life, I want to make sure that I'm nailing the things that matter.

The key is that I use very simple words.  I'm effectively choosing labels for my wins. For example, "Vision is draft complete" is simple enough to say, and simple enough to remember.  If I can't say it, it's not sticky.

When I get to work, I scan my mail.  I think of my inbox as a stream of *potential* action.  I walk the halls to beat the street. I absorb what I learn against what I set out to do for the week.  If necessary, I readjust.  If I catch my manager, I do a quick sanity check to find out his Three Wins for the Week, and how I'm mapping to what's on the radar.

For each project on my plate, I have a simple list of work items.  This gives me "One Place to Look."  This also helps me identify the "Next Best Thing" to do.  It's this balance of the lists with what's top of mind, that keeps me grounded.  I try to support my mind, with just enough scaffolding, but let it do what it does best.  If I can identify the big outcomes for the week, I don't have to get caught up in the overhead of tracking minutia.

On my computer, I keep notepad open so that I can list my three wins at the top for the week, list my three wins for the day, any tasks or things on my mind below that.  It's important that I keep my mind fresh and ready for anything.  It's also where I do my brain dump at the end of the day ("Dump Your State"), which is simply a dump of anything on my mind or pending issues, so that I don't take work home with me, and I can pick up from where I left off, or start fresh the next day.

Daily Wins

Each day of the week, the most important thing I do at the start of the day, is identify Three Wins that I want for that day. I write them down.  I cross-check them against the Three Wins that I want for the week. 

First I brainstorm on what I want or need to achieve for the day.  This is just a rapid brain dump.  If I'm at my desk, I write it down on paper.  When I hone in on what seems to be my three key wins for the day, I say them out loud.  Verbalizing them is important, because it's how I simplify and internalize them.  Being able to say them, keeps them at my mental finger tips.  It's like having the scoreboard right in plain view.  I want them front and center so that I can use them to help me prioritize and focus throughout the day.

Worst Things First

I try to put my "Worst Things First", either in the start of the week, or the start of the day.  The worst thing is to have something looming over me all day or all week.  The other way I look at this is, if I jump my worst hurdle, then the rest of the day or the week is a glide-path.

If my worst thing is time consuming, then I might need to "Timebox" it, such as spend no more than an hour max on it.  If the work is intensive, I might tend to split it up, and work through it in 20 minute batches, and take 10 minute breaks.  If I'm on a roll, I might go straight for an hour.  If this is regular work that I need to do, that I really don't enjoy doing, then I try to either get it off my plate, or find a way to make it fun, or "Pair Up" with somebody.  I find somebody who loves to do what I hate doing, and see if they might like to show me, either why they love it, or how to do it better, faster, and easier.  This practice has taught me so many new tricks, and it's also helped me appreciate some of the deep skills that others are good at.

Power Hours

I know my peak times and my down times during the day.  For example, at around 11:00 AM, I have lunch on my mind, and 3:00 PM is effectively siesta time.

My best hours tend to be 8:00, 10:00, 2:00, and 4:00.

They are the hours where I am in the zone and firing on all cylinders.   I’m generally more “productive” earlier in the day, and more “creative” later in the day.   I don’t know all the reasons why, but what I do know is it’s a pattern.  And by knowing that pattern, I can leverage it.

What I do is I push my heaving lifting into those hours as best as I can.  I use my best horse-power to plow through my work and turn mountains into mole-hills.   When I don’t use those peak hours, somehow mole-hills turn into mountains, and it’s slow going.  It’s the difference in feeling between riding a wave, and pushing rocks uphill.

To get to this point, I simply had to notice during the week, when my best hours really are, not just when I want them to be.  Now that I know my best times for peak performance, I have to defend those hours as best I can, or at least know what I am trading off.

When it comes to defending your calendar, you need to know what’s worth it.  Once you know your best Power Hours, you know what’s worth it.

Aside from spending more time in my high ROI activities, and playing to my strengths, my Power Hours amplify my productivity more than any other way.

Creative Hours

This is the space of creative breakthroughs and innovation.  It’s not that I’m not creative throughout the day, but I generally have a pattern where I’m more creative at night, or in the quiet hours of the morning.  I’m also more creative on Fridays and Saturdays.

I can try to change the pattern, but I can also first notice the pattern and leverage what already exists.  If I know the times when I’m most creative, I can start to use this time to think and brainstorm more freely.

And, I do.

That’s how I come up with ways to do things better, faster, and cheaper.  It’s how I figure out ways to change the business, or ways to change my approach, and ways to take things to the next level.

When I’m in my creative zone, I do more exploration.  I follow my thoughts and play out “what if” scenarios.  I value the fact that my Creative Hours lead the ideas that help me learn and improve whatever I do.

A simple check, if I’m not flowing enough ideas or if I’m feeling too much nose-to-the grindstone, is I ask myself, “How many Creative Hours did I spend this week?”   If it’s not at least 2, I try to up the count.

Create Hours are my best way to decompress, absorb and synthesize, which ultimately leads to my greatest breakthroughs.

 

Daily Shutdown Routine

Day is done, gone the Sun.  From the lakes, from the hills, from the sky.

But how do you put it to rest?

I like a deliberate switch from work-mode to home-mode.  I don’t want to bring my work home with me, and have it seep into everything I do.  When I’m at work, I work hard (and play hard, too … especially because I treat work like play, and drive it with a passion.)

But when I shut down my work day, I need a way to unwind.

I found the best way to free my mind, is dump it down.   So I simply dump it to notepad, or my little yellow sticky pad.  Any open issues or challenges or things on my mind.  I can always pick them back up.  Or, I can let them go.

But the last thing I want is for a bunch of problems to be swirling around in my head.

Besides, if you stop swirling problems around in your head, you make space for creative insights, and the answers start to pop out of the woodwork.

Another pattern I’ve adopted is to use a metaphorical tree in my mind to hang my hat of problems on.  Again, I can always pick them up again tomorrow, but for now, I’ll stuff my problems in this hat, hang them on the tree, and free my mind.

Friday Reflection

What if every Friday you could get smarter about your productivity and effectiveness?

You can.

I know it sounds simple, and it is, but remember that one of the big keys in life is not just knowing what to do, but doing what you know.

Friday Reflection is a perfect chance to ask myself two simple questions:

1. What are three things going well?
2. What are three things to improve?

That’s how it starts.

I keep a simple recurring 20-minute appointment with myself for each Friday morning.   It’s often the most valuable 20 minutes I spend each week.  It’s where I actually reflect on my performance.  Not in a critical way, but a constructive way.  I explore with simple questions:

1. Am I biting off too much?
2. Am I biting off the right things?
3. Am I making the right impact?
4. Are there better activities I could spend more time on?
5. Are there soul-sucking activities that I could spend less time on?

Friday Reflection is how I learn to master my capacity and be more realistic about my own expectations.   I tend to over-estimate what’s possible in a week (and underestimate what’s possible in a month.)   This little feedback loop, helps me see the good, the bad, and the downright fugly.

The most important outcome of my Friday Reflection is, three things to try out next week to do a little better.

The little better adds up.

The main thing to keep in mind is that Friday Reflection gives you deeper insight into your strengths and weaknesses in a way that you instantly benefit from.   The key is to carry the good forward, and let the rest go, and to treat it as a continuous learning loop.

You only fail when you give up or stop learning or stop trying.

Monthly Focus

To make my month more meaningful and to add a dash of focus to it, I identify my Three Wins for the Month.  At the month level, I can take a step back and look at the bigger picture.   Asking myself, “What do I want under my belt when the month is over?” is a powerful and swift way to create clarity, and identify compelling outcomes.

Since I'm leading a team, I go a step further.  I think of Three Wins for the team.  Based on everything that's on our plate, I try to identify what the Three Wins for the team should be.  I try to figure out things that would be easy to share with my manager.  This makes it easy to check alignment, and it makes it easy for them to sell our impact up the management chain.  (Read – It helps you get better performance reviews.)

When I get to work, I send out a short mail to the team, with the subject line: WEEKLY WINS: 2012-07-23.  It's simply WEEKLY WINS, plus the current date.  I briefly summarize the drivers, the threats, and hot issues on our plate, then list the Three Wins identified.   I follow this by asking the team for their input, and whether we need to recalibrate.  At the bottom, I simply do an A-Z list of bulleted items to dump the full working set of work in flight.  It both helps people see what the full scope is, as well as help us rationalize whether we bit off the right things, and it helps people stay on top of all the work.  It's like a team To-Do list.  Sometimes it's a crazy list, but the three wins at the top, help keep our sanity and focus at all times.

It's a simple approach, but it works great for distributed teams, and it gives us something to go back and check at the end of the week, or throughout the week to remind ourselves of what we set out to do.

Since my manager adopted Agile Results too, he shares his three wins for the week to the team in a simple mail.  Folks across the team, simply add their wins for the week.  It's nothing formal ... it's more like a simple assertion of our intended victories.

During our team meeting, our manager goes around the team, and we share our three wins from last week, and our three wins we plan for this week.  This helps everybody across the team stay connected to what's going on.

Ten at Ten

I need to throw in this tip, because it’s the single most effective way I’ve found to get a team on the same page, and avoid a bunch of email.  And, it’s a simple way to create clarity, and avoid confusion.

It also builds the discipline of execution.

All you do is meet for ten minutes each day, Monday through Thursday.  I call it, Ten at Ten.

I found ten at ten to be one of the most effective times in the day to do a sync.  That said, because I always have distributed teams, I’ve had to vary this.   But for the most part, I like Ten at Ten as a reminder to have a quick sync up with the team, focused on creating clarity, debottlenecking any issues, and taking note of small wins and progress.

The way it works is this:

1. I schedule ten minutes for Monday through Thursday, at whatever time the team can agree to, but in the AM.
2. During the meeting, we go around and ask three simple questions:  1)  What did you get done?  2) What are you getting done today? (focused on Three Wins), and 3) Where do you need help?
3. We focus on the process (the 3 questions) and the timebox (10 minutes) so it’s a swift meeting with great results.   We put issues that need more drill-down or exploration into a “parking lot” for follow up.  We focus the meeting on status and clarity of the work, the progress, and the impediments.

You’d be surprised at how quickly people start to pay attention to what they’re working on and on what’s worth working on.  It also helps team members very quickly see each other’s impact and results.  It also helps people raise their bar, especially when they get to hear  and experience what good looks like from their peers.

Most importantly, it shines the light on little, incremental progress.  Progress is the key to happiness in work and life.

One thing I’ll point out is that the Monday meeting is actually 30 minutes, not 10 minutes, since it’s more of a level set for the week, and it’s a chance to figure out the Three Wins for the Week.

Well, there it is.

It might not look like a simple system for meaningful results, but when you think of all the synthesis it is effective.

The way to keep it simple is to always start simple.   Whenever you forget what to do, go back to the basics.  Simply ask yourself,

“What are Three Wins I want for today?”

- OR -

“What are Three Wins I want for this week?”

- OR -

“What are Three Wins I want for this month?”

- OR -

… if you’re feeling really bold, and want to go for the gold, “What are Three Wins I want for this year?”

Hopefully, this little walkthrough helps you easily see how you can apply Agile Results to your workflow, and get more out of the time you already spend.  If nothing else, remember this:

Value is the ultimate short-cut.

When you know what’s valued, you can target your effort.  When you know the high value activities, you can focus on those.

What Agile Results does is streamline your ability to flow value, for yourself and others. 

Pure and simple.

And that’s how getting results should be … elegance in action.

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If you find you can't keep up with the world around you, then break things down.  Breaking things down is the key to finishing faster.

Breaking things down is also the key to agility.

One of the toughest project management lessons I had to learn was breaking things down into more modular chunks.   When I took on a project, my goal was to make big things happen and change the world. 

After all, go big or go home, right?

The problem is you run out of time, or you run out of budget.  You even run out of oomph.  So the worst way to make things happen is to have a bunch of hopes, plans, dreams, and things, sitting in a backlog because they're too big to ship in the time that you've got.

Which brings us to the other key to agility ... ship things on a shorter schedule.

This re-trains your brain to chunk things down, flow value, chop dependencies down to size, learn, and, move on.

Best of all, if you miss the train, you catch the next train.

I’m always on the lookout for the best insight and action you can use for work and life.  I especially enjoy when I find somebody who is truly a thought leader, a giant in their space.

After all, I’m a big fan of helping everyone “stand on the shoulders of giants.”

Elizabeth is a giant (actually, more like a Titan) in the field of management.   She brings to the table more than 30 years of experience in the art and science of management.  She’s a former McKinsey partner, a holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, and she is the author of McKinsey’s Marvin Bower, and The Definitive Drucker.

She knows her stuff.

So I asked her to share her stuff.

Elizabeth has written a powerful guest post for me on her best lessons learned in the art and science of management:

Management Lessons of a Lifelong Student, by Elizabeth Edersheim.

She reveals the secrets of the best managers and best leaders, and puts it right at your fingertips.  Every now and then you read something that changes your breadth or depth on a topic.   This is one of those posts.

It’s a wealth of insight and action.

Keep in mind that Elizabeth operates at multiple levels of management, so whether you are a line-leader or a CEO, Elizabeth has distilled some key insights you can immediate apply, or refine your thinking, or perhaps lead to a new “ah-ha” moment.

Enjoy, and may the best practices for management serve you well, whether you’re shaping your own business or the business around you.