Connecting with Customers

I had this epiphany when I came to Agile. As a solution architect I had been spending a lot of time getting sign-offs from customers to make sure we had the right solution before we started the project.

The problem is solutions are like art. Often customers don’t know what they want till they see it. Further, they may not even know what the underlying problem is. What they do know, is what is they don’t like what they have today.

While customers are not experts at understanding how to take a problem apart and find an answer, your solution team is, but, your solution team may not know what is most important to the customer. Worse, they often think they know and move forward to test that theory by delivering a finished product – that’s an expensive experiment!

The epiphany I had was: Take the customers who understand where their pain points are and know a good solution when they see it; put them together with teams who are experts at root cause analysis and developing innovative ideas and you create the perfect environment for innovative solutions that meet customer needs.

How to Connect with Customers

Whether you are developing software solutions, creating marketing campaigns, developing education curriculums, or changing a business process, chances are you are trying to think of the right solution for your customers. However, if you have ever delivered a finished project and the customer says “Oh, now I know what I want,” – this is the strong an indication that there’s an opportunity to improve.

Here are some steps to make this actionable:

Continual Learning

It’s cliché that the world is moving quickly. A key element of this change is companies, many whom are your competitors, continually looking for better ways to serve customers. Just ask Sears, Kmart, or Toys R Us and they’ll tell you – If you’re not finding a better way, someone will.

The problem is our current structures are not built for learning – they are built for control. Hierarchies are built to increase efficiency and stability in the organization, not leverage great ideas. We need to change this. We need to build companies of entrepreneurs, where experimentation and innovation are an integral part of what we do. We want good ideas to get the same attention, no matter where they originate.

How to do we foster continual learning into our organizations

Before you even start, one of the first things to consider is understanding what is the clear goal of what you want when you are finished. Do you want more efficiency, do you want more customer value, do you want more sales, do you want more revenue, more profits? As we discussed in Part 3 – Teams are amazing idea engines – set them loose on a problem and they will come up with incredible results, but you have to start with pointing them towards the right problem. As a leadership team – it’s your responsibility to understand where you want innovation in your organization and what is going to make a difference, so your teams can focus on how to get you there.

The next thing you need is the right environment. Looking back again at Part 3 the Power of Teams, we mentioned psychological safety is important. But, that isn’t just safety within the team. Ironically, for the team to succeed they also need to be able to fail. With innovation, people need to feel safe in the organization as a whole, knowing that ideas may not work every time, but when they do, it will be worth it.

You also need an idea meritocracy. Often when you start a new team, members come in wanting to know what their tasks are and when they are due. They know they are usually asked to leave their brain at the door and just do the tasks as asked. What a waste of good people! Teams need to know that great ideas can come from anywhere or anyone. It shouldn’t matter if you are in accounting, you might have a great idea for operations. Operations might have a great idea for sales. You may see great ideas come from facilities, customer service, or accounting. We need to be able to judge ideas on merit, not rank or role.

This next part is a little more controversial since it has to do with money. To entice entrepreneurs, you need to be able to share rewards for great ideas. To find the best way to serve customers, you need to measure the value the team is delivering to them. Taking that one step further – as teams deliver great value, there should be some direct rewards, sharing the value of those ideas that made it possible.

It’s rewarding to see the value customers are getting but if organizations don’t share a portion of the benefits, team members may end up feeling cynical that they’re doing a great job, but the owners are the only ones seeing rewards. Nucor Steal pays employees 75% of market wages, but with bonuses they can make 125%.  At Google, employees can make as much as 300% more than someone in the same role, based on the value of their contributions.  Haier, a Chinese appliance company, has broken departments into small mini companies where employees are encouraged to think of new revenue streams and there can be significant rewards when those ideas payoff.

Beyond the right environment, the last element is room to process and digest thoughts. Agile is the only methodology I’ve seen that does continual improvement effectively. The reason is that there is time built into every iteration to take a step back, discuss where to improve, and build those tasks into the next iteration.  We all know that improvement is important, but we’re not scheduling time to do it.

In one of the departments I managed, I thought I was doing a great job delegating and communicating with my team till we had our first retro. I was surprised to learn that wasn’t the case. Over the course of a year, we were able to eliminate, automate, and delegate my administrative overhead from 20 hours a week to 4. It left me a lot more time to focus on strategic value and the team was much happier with the growth they were seeing. You have opportunities, but you won’t know where those opportunities to grow are, or what is possible, until you take time to ask.

Benefits of Continual Learning

People talk about an Agile transformation like it is a destination that you get to.  However, Agile is a journey. It’s about building an organization that is continually changing and adapting to better fit the world around it. Continual learning is really one of the key principles to Agile because it builds a truly flexible organization.  That means:

As an organization – you don’t have to worry about driving results. A key job today for leadership is to drive the organization to be more effective. Agile puts in a structure where everyone is focused on being more effective. That means leadership has more time to focus on strategic direction.

As a customer – the company is always growing and adjusting to better fit your needs. Every iteration, they are asking how they can serve you better.

As a team – you get growth. Too many times we think people aren’t satisfied because of money or benefits. But a key reason employees leave a job is because they don’t have an opportunity to grow. Continual learning gives you the opportunity to not just do more, but to be more, increasing the value you add. If you’re with a good company, it also means you get to take the results of some of those ideas home as a well-deserved thank you.

The idea of continual improvement isn’t new. Toyota started quality circles after WWII leading to its popularity in the 1950’s. But, 70 years later, it seems we’re still not doing it well. Most teams meet regularly to discuss status. It’s not hard to add some reflection time to those meetings. You can google fun retrospectives to get some ideas of how to get people thinking more creatively. Whether you borrow the approach from Lean or Agile, building continual improvement will help your company grow.

As we have gone through the four key Agile principles, you’re probably thinking they aren’t new. You’re right, they’re not. Agile is really just a collection of good business practices, and rather than a detailed practice, it’s a combination of good principles that companies should leverage to improve what they do.

As you look at Agile, rather than thinking that’s not for me, or that would never work here, do what Agile did —  Take a bunch of great ideas and make them your own.

How did his journey start? His first “official” Project Manager job began when he joined DHL in November, 2004, but his project management journey actually began many years before. In fact, as a child, " I exhibited the innate traits of successful project managers when in the school recess yard my friends wanted to play football, but I brought a pencil and paper out of the classroom to create plays. Most of the kids didn’t want to plan and simply wanted to play (Sound familiar?). I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was the beginning of honing my skills as a servant leader."

After graduating high school, Keith went to a trade school to study electronics technology, because he had a fascination with figuring out how things work and a knack for troubleshooting problems. He worked his way up through Motorola as a Network Analyst and then joined American Power Conversion (APC) to become a Data Center Operations Manager. Throughout this part of his career, Keith was leading teams by creating plans to implement new networks, build out new data centers and manage daily operations on a 24x7x365 schedule. In essence, "I was performing daily operational tasks while creating and managing informal projects before I even knew of the “Project Manager” profession."

After obtaining his Executive Masters of Business Administration (EMBA) degree, Keith decided to move his family from Rhode Island to Arizona to start a new phase of his career outside of the data center. His peers at Motorola helped him relocate. In 2004, Keith learned about the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Professional (PMP) credentials and realized his IT background and the PMP would allow him to change careers while still being connected to technology, which he loves.

Over the past 17 years, Keith Harrington has intentionally selected and joined various companies to gain experience in transportation and logistics, digital education, financial services, healthcare, hospitality and have for the past 5 years been with a terrific network marketing company, Plexus Worldwide. Throughout the course of this journey, he have honed skills as a Project Manager, Program Manager, Portfolio Manager, ScrumMaster and Executive having successfully developed and currently leads an outstanding team of professionals in an Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO).

I asked Keith Harrington, what he is pastionate about, and he replied, "mentoring my team members to ensure they have the skills and experience to have a successful career in project, program and portfolio management. I had a very good mentor at Motorola that set me on a successful career path and I want to do the same for everyone I can help." After some reflection he felt his colleagues would describe him as analytical, disciplined, honest, and confident which some could describe as arrogance. His introspective traits struck me as a person who respects other's time which has helped his track record of getting projects done.

He believes in the social good, in November, 2020, he became a proud member of the Cancer Support Community of Arizona’s Board of Directors, which is near and dear to his heart since members of his family are cancer survivors. He has also been a blood donor for the past 37 years and a contributor to the Rhode Island Food Bank and St. Mary’s Food Bank for more than 30 years.

Keith Harrington is a gifted storyteller. When I asked him what was on his bucket list besides adding books to an ecletic library he broke it into two parts. "On a social and spiritual level, I want to make sure my family and people that know me consider me a genuine friend that gave back more than I received. On a physical level, I want to build my dream house to spend my retirement years creating, fabricating and giving back to my community."

If you get a chance to speak with Keith Harrington at a breakfast meeting, you will find him engaging. You might even leave with a bit of wisdom.

Salvador Marin is a US Army veteran whose plan initially led him to information technology so he could learn how to create video games, his beginning passion. The demands of his military job, a signal satellite technician who ran equipment forged a different path. Salvador was not trained for it; he went to his unit and the needed role had to be self-taught. It started a lifelong education journey where he became the go to guy. The task uncovered his hidden skills and strengths. Salvador discovered that he was analytical and curious. Creating games led to building his own computer, learning about the circuits and how the electrical components connect. Basically, what makes the game work and why does it work?

Salvador’s employment path began in the private sector began by putting his lessons learned into a college degree which he obtained while working. If you ask Sal who he is, “it's a puzzle solver, he now leads others to the solution.” Salvador is a nerd at heart. His nickname is Data. Star Track followers will remember the character who tends to interpret things literally, the black and white, what is said, rather than what is meant, gray. Today he has learned to ask a series of questions to lead others to solutions instead of providing the answer to help perpetuate learning.

His interest in project management, planning his life rather than stumbling into it, led to an interest in finance. Salvador Marin loves to manage costs and schedules, key in the construction industry. This attention to detail enabled his success. “Who doesn’t know the numbers?”

Salvador’s strong sense of family, raising his children, giving back with the Knights of Columbus and his motto, truth is the truth, he feels will keep him on the correct path. His words resonated with me, “if something is hard, remember someone is always looking up to you and you want them to improve their own situation, so no handups, you can do it if you work to the bone.”

Work serves a purpose; it is all about supporting the family His work ethic has set an example to his siblings as a role model. Sal’s love of video games is still alive, he has turned his passion into quality time with his son.

Salvador Marins next career goal is executive leadership, somehow, I envision his winding road taking him there.

Here is a quick recap of what ADKAR stands for:

·                  AWARENESS

·                  DESIRE

·                  KNOWLEDGE

·                  ABILITY

·                  REINFORCEMENT

Knowledge

Knowledge is about each person understanding how to change. This would be the education and training on the new tool, their processes, and them understanding any new expectations – whether it be a new role or new responsibility. Depending on your change initiative this could be as simple as providing a new URL link or as complex as an entirely new office location, reporting structure, and office procedures. But, even with the range of complexity, this ADKAR milestone is where I think, as Project Managers, we are the most familiar and comfortable with as we typically cover aspects of this during our UAT (User Acceptance Testing) and Training sessions.

I have seen some really cool examples when it comes to how to deliver knowledge. Gamification techniques can be used to tap into the reward center of our brains and provide positive reinforcement as a fun and interactive way to help people gain the new knowledge.

I’ve written a blog about using game theory for time-tracking that goes into detail about each game mechanic if you want to learn more about gamification.

There are a lot of additional resources available to help deliver knowledge including creating interactive quizzes, live train-the-trainer sessions, on-demand training videos, and even using a pilot group to help create early adopters or help discover power-users and champions.

Keep in mind, we do not want to take any previous knowledge for granted or make assumptions on their current knowledge level. Sometimes offering a “foundation” class to make sure everyone is on the same baseline of understanding can help before delivering new information.

Ability

Ability is the fourth ADKAR milestone. This is the person’s skills as they relate to the future state. They may have the awareness, they are on board about the change, they have been trained – but do they have the ability? Meaning, do they have the intellectual capability, the physical ability, an SME (Subject Matter Experts) or mentor support, and the time to learn what is needed for the successful change?

One example that helps describe this ADKAR milestone is if there was a change for a company to shift from an hour lunch to a half hour lunch. This may seem like a simple change, but what if the person takes public transport or drops their kids off at school — getting off a half hour earlier or coming in a half hour later is not an option for them.

I think we have all had some personal experience with this when it comes to COVID and having to work remotely. I may be on board to work remote because I understand why (we have a pandemic) I have the desire (I don’t want to get COVID or infect others), I have the knowledge (I have been trained on how to login remote) but do I have good internet and a place to set up my workstation at home?

Also, sometimes it may take people different amounts of time to learn something new. We all know the type of person (I’m one of them) that needs a little bit of time to process and try it on their own to help settle their new understanding of the process. They have gone through training, so they have the knowledge of how to do it, but they may need a few weeks of using the new tool in order to develop their competency and ability to actually use it.

Projects that have a quick go-live and do not account for this may can put a person’s Ability milestone at risk so it’s something to keep an eye on while building out your project plans and working with managers.