Appreciating Systems

Although I love methods, standards (hey, I’m from Lean!) and the like, I also like when people come up with ways to look at their work and their company in perspectives that external people (us here) might not have imagined.

So, also to keep things simple, I would consider teaching people (and making corresponding “templates”) about DSRP as a way to learn differently than only linear thinking. See http://www.thinkingateverydesk.com/ to know more on that systems thinking approach or method.

Faced with a problem (a process to be improved for instance), DSRP would allow to ask broader-view questions such as:

• Distinctions: what are we looking at? What’s missing from the picture? Who could provide for other distinctions?
• Systems: what systems (notice the plural here) does this process contribute to? What sub-systems is it composed of?
• Relationships: how are parts of the process interacting with each others, especially differently than from what’s written on paper (possible ISO 9001 documentation)? What relationships are we blind to? How could we know best? How is this process related to other processes (both formally AND informally)?
• Perspectives: what assumptions are we making regarding this process and how it is supposed to function? What assumptions make it (dys)function the way it does? What other perspective might we take to enlight the process differently? What might we learn, then?

And of course, there’s the possibility to use DSRP to craft positive and appreciative questions. I haven’t much given thoughts to this, but I will surely address the topic in my book “The Colors of Change“.

Dan Heath (who co-wrote “Switch: how to change things when change is hard“) talks about focusing on the positive rather than the negative here: Silver Linings: Positive Deviance, Appreciative Inquiry | Thunderhead Works.

This also is the topic of my own book “The Colors of Change” that currently under writing but for which you can download the first chapters. In it I explain why it is that we do that wrong step of digging into problems (hint: this is natural to how the brain is wired), and what should be done instead, and how.

Joshua Kerievsky has written a really nice and comprehensive article on Agile and the usage (abuse) of story points: Stop Using Story Points | Industrial Logic.

I always felt like Agile (or Kanban) felt in love with their tools and didn’t use them for continuous improvement past the obvious. I mean, you have those that just use the tool to manage work and don’t improve (they usually don’t do review at the end of the sprint). Then there are those that, while doing the review, would work at removing the blocks of the sprint and ensure next sprint won’t suffer the same problems. And it usually stops here.

The real point of Agile (or Lean for that purpose) should always IMHO have been to constantly work at reducing the delay between the moment a client requests a feature and the moment it is used successfully. So the review should have been used for more than just removing obvious roadblocks.

So I’m pleased the story points are gone for the most advanced agile practitioners (they would probably continue to be useful for beginners, I just hope people will feel less sticky with them).

But now my concern is whether the story point less teams will continue doing reviews and:

• seeing their process together
• solving problems /improving together
• learning together

I look forward to what new will happen in the Agile world. Great job so far anyway!

The day that Bob & Mary were liberated at work to be who they really are – YouTube.

Who have you liberated at work recently?

Excellent article bien documenté sur le Lean dans Les Echos: Le “lean management”, un danger pour les salariés?.

En ce qui me concerne, le Lean doit être tri-gagnant simultanément:

• bénéfique pour les employés (en premier car c’est eux qui doivent maintenir l’amélioration continue et qui font tourner les processus de l’entreprise)
• bénéfique pour les clients (sinon l’entreprise coulera)
• bénéfique pour l’entreprise (sinon aucun intérêt à dépenser de l’argent dedans).

Toute initiative qui ne viserait pas à établir un gain sur les trois axes simultanément ne pourrait qu’avoir des bénéfices à court terme et négatifs sur le long terme. Et n’est-ce pas le long terme que visent toutes les entreprises?

J’ai lu avec beaucoup d’intérêt le livre collectif “La pratique du Lean Management dans l’IT“.

Travaillant moi-même dans l’IT et le Lean, je connais plusieurs versions de ce qu’on appelle ”le Lean”, et dans l’IT, tout ne se passe pas toujours très bien (ne me lancez pas sur les causes profondes de ces échecs, j’en aurai pour des heures!)

Ce livre, sans être une bible de référence sur le sujet (ce que les auteurs n’avaient je pense pas l’intention de faire), démontre comment il est :

1. facile de faire du Lean dans l’IT ;
2. possible d’obtenir rapidement d’impressionnants résultats ;
3. possible de placer et conserver les gens au centre de la démarche.

En effet, beaucoup de démarches déploient une forme de Lean en mode “command & control” ce qui d’une part est une hérésie en matière de gestion du changement et d’autre part n’est tout simplement pas du Lean.

Point de tout cela ici. Le livre est très clair sur les manières de faire, limpides sur les raisons de faire ce qui a été fait, et les histoires rapportées (nombreuses et éclairantes) apportent un vrai plus.

Relativement court, le livre devrait permettre à tout bon manager IT de se décider à se lancer dans le Lean management, pour peu qu’il veuille bien aider ses collaborateurs à sortir des difficultés dans lesquelles le système les a enfermés au fil du temps…

Un must à lire !

This is a really good video, which reminds me of Appreciative Inquiry and Solution Focus at the same time.
Here is it:

Here’s a nice correspondence list between weaknesses and corresponding strenghs.

How to Turn Your Weaknesses Into Strengths | LinkedIn.

Personally, I do prefer focusing on my strengths (exemple through ViaMe), but the preceding list my come in handy when someone complains about some weaknesses and you can’t have them take a strength-test on the spot. The preceding list may be useful to wipe negativity on first sight

Details are available on the page over there: https://leanpub.com/tcoc or from here (a bit more complete).

Subtitle is “Respectful Change Management explained by Cybernetics”.

Check it out!

I’ve just viewed the video here about the DSRP “thinking toolkit” I’ve already blogged about. Indeed, I even used it for my introductory Systems Thinking Slides out of my recent Napkin skills.

Level 1 Module 1 – ThinkNation.

Check the web site!