How to motivate a team or a group of people to use Personal Kanban?
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Sunish Chabba
May 29, 2012, 4:06:50 PM5/29/12
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Hi All,
I bought into PK after reading Jim's book. Kudos to you Jim to bringing such a simple concept in a lucid way through your book. Recently, I took a "Introduction to Personal Kanban" session in my Organization. Though it was widely appreciated but participants did come back to me with their queries like
"We've not been using to-do list as well, why should we use Personal Kanban?", or
" It seems an overhead to use PK, I can't maintain a stack of cards and do not feel any motivation to do it", or
"The concept is good, seems it can help in the development project, but how to start with it, should we put all our pending work items in "todo" column".
Now, I did try my best to answer all of the questions, in fact I did check with them last week in case they have got any addl. queries.
Forgive my ignorance people, I know that I'm still learning the nuances of PK, so would like to know how would you have answered the queries above and what is your experience during PK session, I think Jim and Tonianne can provide their insights here.
Regards,
Sunish
I bought into PK after reading Jim's book. Kudos to you Jim to bringing such a simple concept in a lucid way through your book. Recently, I took a "Introduction to Personal Kanban" session in my Organization. Though it was widely appreciated but participants did come back to me with their queries like
"We've not been using to-do list as well, why should we use Personal Kanban?", or
" It seems an overhead to use PK, I can't maintain a stack of cards and do not feel any motivation to do it", or
"The concept is good, seems it can help in the development project, but how to start with it, should we put all our pending work items in "todo" column".
Now, I did try my best to answer all of the questions, in fact I did check with them last week in case they have got any addl. queries.
Forgive my ignorance people, I know that I'm still learning the nuances of PK, so would like to know how would you have answered the queries above and what is your experience during PK session, I think Jim and Tonianne can provide their insights here.
Regards,
Sunish
Jim Benson
Jun 1, 2012, 3:30:16 PM6/1/12
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I'm surprised that people would think it was overhead to use PK ... it's pretty much built to have the least impact possible.
But I always fall back on two points.
1. You can better manage what you can see
and
2. You can't do more work than you can handle
If people keep blindly managing their work, they won't see their full range of options, they will underestimate the amount of work they have, and they will continue to blame fate for failure.
If people continue to take on more work than they can handle, they will continue to miss deadlines, they will introduce technical debt into their flow, and they will ... continue to blame fate for failure.
As for the other two questions... number three would require actual knowledge of the project and number one is an entire chapter in the book. :-)
Jim
--
Jim Benson
Collaborative Management
--
Jim Benson
Collaborative Management
Modus Cooperandi: Performance Through Collaboration
Personal Kanban: Personal organization your brain will actually like
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Sunish Chabba
Jun 1, 2012, 5:46:03 PM6/1/12
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Hi Jim,
I agree with you. I'd encountered such questions and thought of sharing this with the group.
Also, number one was asked by someone who is not using to-do lists or any such other mechanism, so it was asked that what should be the motivation for him to use PK (and not the other way around i.e. someone is using to-do lists, so what advantage PK can provide). Then I asked him that how does he manage the plethora of work items coming from his personal and professional lives. He replied giving an example that project work is assigned to him by the supervisor on a portal and he takes it one by one or the case may be. And, he remembers personal tasks like paying bills etc, and never found any need to maintain to-do lists. After hearing his reply, I told him that as he is taking out work items from an online portal, so it is akin to a to-do list only and memorizing does help in some cases but many times, it can get overwhelming as well. And, visualizing the pending tasks through PK is bound to give him more control than what is he doing at present. I asked him to try it for a few days and then email me his experience.
That said, though I'm still waiting for his response) but nevertheless, the session was a great experience for me. From your response, it might be the case that you didn't encounter any such question from your audience, or I might not be that effective in my first session (seems its probability is quite high here :)) but still I feel satisfied that I was able to take this concept in front of a large audience.
Regards,
Sunish
I agree with you. I'd encountered such questions and thought of sharing this with the group.
Also, number one was asked by someone who is not using to-do lists or any such other mechanism, so it was asked that what should be the motivation for him to use PK (and not the other way around i.e. someone is using to-do lists, so what advantage PK can provide). Then I asked him that how does he manage the plethora of work items coming from his personal and professional lives. He replied giving an example that project work is assigned to him by the supervisor on a portal and he takes it one by one or the case may be. And, he remembers personal tasks like paying bills etc, and never found any need to maintain to-do lists. After hearing his reply, I told him that as he is taking out work items from an online portal, so it is akin to a to-do list only and memorizing does help in some cases but many times, it can get overwhelming as well. And, visualizing the pending tasks through PK is bound to give him more control than what is he doing at present. I asked him to try it for a few days and then email me his experience.
That said, though I'm still waiting for his response) but nevertheless, the session was a great experience for me. From your response, it might be the case that you didn't encounter any such question from your audience, or I might not be that effective in my first session (seems its probability is quite high here :)) but still I feel satisfied that I was able to take this concept in front of a large audience.
Regards,
Sunish
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Adam Yuret
Jun 1, 2012, 6:50:07 PM6/1/12
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Maybe I'm out of line here but I'd caution against "inflicting help" you may encounter Newton's 3rd law of motion.
Especially in pushed organizations (where work is assigned to workers without clarity or context) it's not uncommon for people to be defensive about how they do their work. It's very easy for "Here's a way to make yourself more effective" to be interpreted as "You're not effective, but I am, let me show you how to be more like me!" ;-)
I know nothing of the context but I just wanted to offer my amateur opinion.
A great way to lead is by example. People try things they see being effective more than things they're told to try. If there's a need to improve organizational process maybe try a lean coffee style meeting to pull from the team things they'd like to improve and let them come up with ideas and tools to try. With Personal Kanban I kept one at work on my desk using a notebook and stickies and people noticed. :-)
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Jim Benson
Jun 7, 2012, 4:41:32 PM6/7/12
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I'm not sure why this showed up today as a new email .. but here it is and here I am.
Like any product, we can't expect that people will instantly see what ours will solve. If he has yet to experience or acknowledge a problem with his working style, he's not going to try to correct it.
I would keep coming back to the two points and rest on their logic.
If he feels he has nothing to manage, then it makes sense that he would have no need to visualize his work. :-)
One day, though, he may run into a snag and say, "Aha! Now is the time for me to experiment with that Personal Kanban thing."
Jim
--
Jim Benson
Collaborative Management
Jim Benson
Collaborative Management
Modus Cooperandi: Performance Through Collaboration
Personal Kanban: Personal organization your brain will actually like
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