My Top 20 ways organisations can get things done faster 3/4
No sooner is the turkey digested than it’s time to make New Year resolutions. Here’s another five bits of inspiration
11/20 INNOVATION BUDGETS
One of the single biggest barriers to innovation is the business case.
Something new is often unproven.
Business cases require certainty.
But because something's not certain to work doesn't mean that it's certain not to work.
What's needed is a pot of money that is entirely ring-fenced for things that probably won't work.
It's a bit of a miracle.
Let's imagine we invest in 10 projects, each of which is 30% likely to succeed (so 70% likely to fail).
Collectively, our portfolio has a 97% probability of a successful project.
The challenge is the willpower to ring-fence the budget.
12/20 DAILY STAND-UPS
Checking-in with each other at the start of the day keeps a sense of progress, but how to do it without wasting time on another meeting?
When doing remote working at Sn-ap, we used Loom - a video plug-in. What about when in person?
Well, while recognising that this approach has its downsides, the approach that Dom (our product manager and COO) introduced was that we did the daily stand-up while adopting the squat position from start to end.
It’s amazing how quickly a meeting can be done with when your glutes are burning.
Obviously not everyone in a huge corporate can have a daily stand up but individual teams can.
(you'll be glad to know that I didn't choose a picture of me doing a squat: you've got a random man from the internet)
13/20 BIAS FOR ACTION
Another Amazon one, this.
So I'll let them describe it:
"Speed matters. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking"
Simples.
14/20 ESCALATION AND RESOLUTION MEETING
Think of the top people in your organisation: the Exec Committee or Directors' Group or whatever they call themselves.
Or whatever you call yourselves, if it is you.
In fact, I'll talk directly to you - as it's you who needs to do this one.
You probably have some themed meetings.
These might include Safety, Performance, Change, etc.
Well, you're gonna love me, because I'm going to suggest another meeting.
Because this is where an hour of your time is going to save hundreds of hours further down the tree.
If you work in an organisation bigger than about 30, I'm going to guess that somewhere in your organisation - right now - there's someone who's work is blocked and you don't know.
Maybe unblocking it requires a decision on the use of another team's resources. But that team has priorities too. Someone needs to make a decision.
Or maybe unblocking it requires you to phone a senior person in a partner organisation to get them access to a key resource.
Whatever. Someone's blocked.
And they don't like asking for help, so they will waste days trying (and failing) to unblock themselves.
But if - every week - you (the most senior decision-makers) actively *invite* people who are blocked to escalate their issue, you can fix things that only you can fix.
You will spend an hour of your time (often five minutes of your time!) to release dozens (hundreds!) of productive hours down the chain.
This is - to use the language of 4/20 a Two Way Door.
Try it - and if you don't like it, you can change it.
15/20 INCREMENTAL CHANGE
When I created my digital startup Sn-ap, we needed to build a tech platform.
As the business largely *was* a tech platform, we raised millions of pounds to hire a software team to build it.
Yet the original real-time information system consisted of... me, sitting on a coach, with a phone, texting updates to the customers.
Sound stupid? It wasn't.
Because our first real-time system was free, we could learn what kinds of information customers valued and when they wanted to receive it.
Eventually, we ended up with a fully automated system that forecast actual arrival and departure times in response to traffic conditions, based on the location of the driver's phone.
But by progressing incrementally, we could course-correct.
I've also been involved in projects that existed solely as a specification and a business case, before the poor development team had to build all of it, in one go.
I know which I prefer to lead.
Sometimes it's not possible to progress incrementally.
But it's often far more frequently than we think it is.
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