3-steps to get time back (and grow your business) — part 2 of 2:
Adding structure to your day to carve out even more time…
From part 1 you know more about your customers, the service you’re selling and have a list to make improvements to your service (all of which will save time). To undertake that to-do list, structuring your day will help.
Fluxx uses the Agile structure in our projects — because it works. It gives structure, allows for surprises and builds team communication. Lack of communication is the cause of a lot of problems in most businesses. Agile isn’t complicated, and you can read about the Agile manifesto here.
There are subtleties within Agile that, with an understanding of the basics, help. Any Agile aficionado will tell you, that understanding them in greater detail will serve you well. For the purposes of this article, we consider one important aspect of Agile, the meeting structure. It’s something which can be applied to a business with ease — after all a business is just a big project!
The structure is cyclical: one cycle is made up of a Sprint, a Sprint planning meeting, Daily Stand-ups, and a Retrospective meeting — each is equally important and shouldn’t be overlooked. The bonus here is that these are the only doing meetings you need.
The diagram below shows how these cycles fit together, and also how this tool helps bring together the steps in this article. That’s because each cycle is fuelled from the doing backlog — the todo list you created — but also a thinking backlog which would come from your strategic mission and vision plus the roadmap you’ve created to get there. If you don’t have those, they will be needed to be done first.
- A sprint is a set period of time work will happen in. It can vary according to your needs but they tend to be a week or two weeks (however for a small business a month might work well). Test and learn what is best for you.
- A Sprint planning meeting happens once a sprint, at the end of one/start of the next. They last around thirty minutes and ‘do exactly what they say on the tin’. From the backlog(s), you plan what you’re going to commit to doing in the next sprint.
- A Daily stand-up is a work-day meeting that happens each day. They help productivity and communication because people verbally commit to stuff and the team knows who’s doing what. They are quick, around fifteen minutes. The team literally stand-up around their todo list (see KanBan board — Trello is a digital KanBan board. Although I’d recommend a physical one, mirrored, if necessary, by Trello). In Daily stand-ups each person, in turn, answers these three questions:
- 1. Yesterday I did…
- 2. Today I’m doing…
- 3. I have these blockers (things that are preventing me from doing what I need to do)…
How might this play out?
Over sprint cycles, as a team, you move your todo-list /enablers backlog from to do, through doing, to done. Note: In a daily stand up meeting don’t go into detail around points, have a brief clarifying chat, if more is required have the conversation afterwards. They are short for a reason (no-one likes meetings).
- A Retrospective meeting happens directly before the Sprint planning meeting. Again about thirty minutes. Its job is to look back at how the last sprint went and to make things better. Its purpose is to encourage team communication and discuss what they think they should Drop (stop doing), Add, Keep doing, and Improve on, or DAKI for short.
Exercise & Tools:
Write your DAKI’s, in secret, on Post-Its (use one for each (and the same colour helps)). Once a team has exhausted their ideas group the Post Its, then openly discuss each one. The goal is for the amount of DAKI’s to reduce over time. Try it for four sprints, test and learn (that’s the point).
The last thing to add is a structure to know who’s doing what (to avoid duplication). A RACI matrix (the last acronym, promise) is a list showing what needs to be done operationally to keep your business afloat and who is Responsible (going to do it), Accountable (head’s on the line for it), Consulted (about it), Informed (about the outcome i.e. they don’t need to consult on it they just need to know the outcome).
Exercise & Tools:
Make the list of day-to-day operational tasks with your team vertically, list the team horizontally and put an R, A, C, I against each action. Discuss the overlaps (there will be some) and push for clarity — generally a single letter under each name for a given task (although a person can be R and A). Note: not everyone needs a letter, just means they aren’t involved in that task.
Next step..?
Talk to your team and suggest using this structure for four sprints. The trick is to do it enough until a habit is formed — ease and repetition are key to that. Share the responsibility of who drives the flow of the meetings each sprint.
Remember it’s a structure to aid communication — to know who’s doing what- not the time to do the things. Keep the meetings as brief as possible — a habit will form and things will improve.
If you’d like to see ways we’ve helped companies and could help yours, take a look at our site: Fluxx.uk.com, subscribe to our newsletter and/or read the free download of our new book The Plan Sucks.
Adam Slawson is Lead consultant at Fluxx, a company that uses experiments to understand customers, helping clients to transform their businesses. We work with organisations such as Atkins, National Grid, the Parliamentary Digital Service and the Royal Society of Arts. Email me if you’d like to know more.
If you enjoyed this, you might enjoy “7 things kickboxing taught me about innovation”, “Social media: A silent killer of innovation”, “The one where Friends teaches you how to be a great service designer”, “Six behavioural flaws that make us stupid around money” and “13 things we learned while designing a more democratic Houses of Parliament.”
For more visit our Medium page: https://medium.com/fluxx-studio-notes
