As I’m settling into my desk and sipping on my hot coffee this morning I find my to-do list and mentally prepare for a game plan to get things done this week. I look to my calendar and see that Thanksgiving is a week away. A week away?? Where has the time gone?! In any case I remind myself that every year it comes as a surprise to me – even though I always know it’s coming. It always seems to creep up on me when I’m the most busy. I sigh out loud thinking about the work I’ll have to catch up on. The thoughts of working through my lunch hour and working late into the evenings sink in as I shift around in my office chair. Those thoughts alone make me feel tired. For a moment. Then, a thought lifts me up. How great does it feel to get back to work after a refreshing long weekend? Oh yes, there are other stressors – the ones that derive from family members that drive you crazy during the chaos of Thanksgiving. But what about the moments during it all? The release of laughter at the table when someone tells an embarrassing story about you? Or the sweet taste of honey-glazed ham that your loved one cooks just right? Or the fireplace crackling over the chatter that fills the room?
That brought me back to thinking about how you should find things that you’re thankful for in the workplace – even if you’ve got a lot on your to-do list. What are the things that put a smile on your face while you’re at work? What drives you to hustle for your team? What are the things that have kept you going and keep you motivated to be the best you can be at your job?
This morning I have come up with 5 reasons to be thankful for your team – and I’ve given a personal account of what that has meant for me and my experiences with EAC Product Development Solutions.
1. A Team That Gives Back
I am so grateful that I am a part of a team that cares about giving back. From the moment I started here I knew it was going to be a great fit. There is a very active presence in the volunteering department. I immediately wanted to get involved. The first month I started, I organized our team to volunteer with Feed My Starving Children for the late part of an afternoon. You get together in groups at each station and work together to pack food into boxes- and as a challenge, you’re timed and it becomes a race to see which group can pack the most food within the timeframe. It’s the perfect team building exercise as well as a great way to give back to those that are in need of food around the world. If you’ve never done this with your team, I strongly suggest doing so.
I’ve also had a few conversations with some team members who felt strongly about the Men’s Health movement so our team got together and launched a Movember project. We currently have a lot of hairy men in the office right now – all of whom are behind a good cause of course. The Movember Foundation lets individuals and teams raise funds for prostate cancer, testicular cancer, mental health and suicide awareness – all in hopes of stopping men from dying too young. We’ve come together as a team to raise funds that many of us are truly passionate about.
Please donate to our team! https://moteam.co/eac-no-shave-ember
2. A Work Culture That Aligns With Your Values
The first week I started at EAC, our team had a company BBQ potluck where everyone brought something to pitch in for an afternoon lunch. That was where I got to meet a lot of people who work remotely or are just in different corners of the office. So I got to see faces that I normally wouldn’t run into just because of a simple, yet impactful afternoon BBQ.
When football season crept up there was a lot of talk about a fantasy football league around the office for people who wanted to participate. When the fall season peaked, one of our engineers brought in their garden squash to share with everyone. There are plans to have a ‘Teams-giving’ next week to celebrate Thanksgiving in the office. When you run into a coworker, there is more than just work conversation – there is real value in that conversation because your work culture is fun.
Another great example of how fun the work culture is at EAC is the fact that we celebrate people. In our weekly meetings we celebrate work anniversaries and birthdays – and if that person works in the same office – guess what? We go out for lunch to celebrate them. Work for a company that cares about you and celebrates you.
3. Individual Strengths
I can honestly say that everyone that I have met from our company has a strong work ethic. Everyone is proud of their work and wants to do well at their job. It is the little things that each individual does that makes the whole team successful in the end. What is that saying again? Oh yeah – you are only as strong as your weakest link. When everyone works hard to accomplish their goals then the ultimate goal on top is just that much closer to being managed.
So how do we make sure that each individual is on track to meet their goals? We check in on them. And I’m not talking about just one-on-ones when you can talk about your individual progress. We check in on each other. You know – as friends – no, as humans do from time to time. Mental health is important in the workplace too. We even started doing wall-sits, squats, and planks to keep our physical health in check. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had someone just come up and just ask how I’m doing or just ask what I’m up to out of curiosity. We treat each other like family here which takes me to my next point.
4. Small Wins
I’ve learned not to ignore the small wins. Every day you put forth a lot of effort to get things done. Some days you accomplish more than others. But all efforts mean that you care about your job and that you are willing to do what needs to be done – even if it may not mean more money or more praise. There are always opportunities around the office that may not be on your priority list but if you go out of your way to tend to them, then it can give you a solid reward in the end. So when you’re checking tasks off your to-do list, do not forget to feel good about checking the small tasks off too.
5. One Mission, One Message
I noticed right away in my interview process was that not only was I interviewed with the Marketing Department but I was also interviewed with the Sales Department as well. I had a professor in college who told me repeatedly that in marketing you need to have your sales department on the same page as you or you’ll never meet your goals. He said that it sounds so obvious but you would not believe how often it happens because people get so buried in their own work that they forget to work as a team. It was very clear from the interview process that EAC knew this and that the collaboration between departments was vital to their success. I immediately had thought of what my professor had said and I decided that this company was on the right track.
After being with the company for only four months I can say that I work with sales on a weekly basis – if not daily. It is so important to have the right message – whatever that may mean to your company. This not only helps with consistency but it helps with your company branding too.
These 5 reasons are what have helped me through the busy and stressful times and remind me that I’m working for a great company. What are the things in the office that you’re thankful for?
Today I’d like to follow up on the last couple of posts. We’ve been talking about systems thinking and knowledge management. If you can think back to the very beginning of this video series we talked about a framework, developed at EAC, for looking at product development as a system. We call it the Product Development Operating System. The foundation of this system is the Information Flow management system. The idea is to present information where it’s needed, in a timely way, inside of your operation.
As Thomas Davenport pointed out, pure technology is not enough. Your knowledge management system needs to include other elements like Obeya rooms or even face-to-face communication.
Information, when presented and encountered by a human mind, has the opportunity to be converted into new knowledge. This happens inside another subsystem of the Product Development Operating System, the Continuous Improvement subsystem. The learning that occurs in the Continuous Improvement subsystem is applied in the Workflow subsystem where learning about product or technology is applied as innovation inside of product development.
The design of a system of flow, the presentation of information and its conversion to knowledge through your knowledge worker environment is a key factor in increasing productivity. When you look at your product development operation, can you see it as a system? Do you understand how the various elements interoperate? Are you getting the results that you want or do you find yourself fighting fires?
Contact us if you cannot see your system as a system and understand where your points of leverage are. We can help. We have a service product called the Product Development System Assessment. It not only baselines your current state, but it also presents a series of recommended improvements to move your system towards a more systematic operation and a healthier state. Our assessment service is designed to get you back on the road to higher productivity in your product development environment.
Contact us to learn more about how Systems Thinking and the application of our Product Development Operating System can help your organization become more efficient, productive, innovative, and competitive. Follow Bill at http://www.twitter.com/systhinking
In previous videos we talked about a framework we’ve developed for looking at product development as a system. In the last two videos and posts we talked about two of the subsystems, both of them flow systems, one being information flow and one being workflow. The third subsystem of the Product Development Operating System is the system of Continuous Improvement. This subsystem is often missing when we begin to work with an organization, and in organizations that are “committed” to continuous improvement; in many cases the efforts are ad-hoc and underwhelming
If you’re familiar with the works of Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, you are probably familiar with his thesis about the tension between our urgent work and important work, and how our urgent work tends to overwhelm our important work. We see this in product development where we see continuous improvement as the important work. Often times it gets pushed aside and overwhelmed by the urgent work of completing projects.
Patrick Lencioni, an author whose work I enjoy reading, talks about the metrics of organizations. He talks about the ultimate metric of an organization as being the health of the organization. In our Product Development Operating System we see the health of your product development system as the ultimate metric of your productivity and effectiveness. It brings to mind the aphorism from Chinese medicine that says, “There is only one disease; congestion. There is only one cure; circulation.” The circulation in product development is the flow systems. The Continuous Improvement subsystem is the system for increasing the overall health of those flows, of the system, and the effectiveness and productivity of the product development system.
The Continuous Improvement subsystem of the product development system has three constituent parts. Each one aligns with a different tier of the organization. There is Strategy. This aligns with the executive tier. The executive tier looks to build a shared vision; a vision of the future of the organization that, collectively, we’re all working to realize. Another element of the continuous improvement subsystem centers on subject mater experts and the increasing their expertise, their development, and the deepening of their expertise and the expansion of competency within the organization. The third element in the continuous improvement subsystem is the importation and development of a root cause problem-solving methodology, specifically one that is appropriate for knowledge workers — the workers that populate product development.
If you bring improvement energies to your product development system, you need to bring a certain threshold of energy just to maintain your current state. If you will, to counter balance the destructive work of entropy. To make significant and continuous improvement you need to invest more energy into the subsystem. You need to invest significant energies into a continuous improvement subsystem that will eventually lead to increased productivity and increased effectiveness of your overall product development operating system.
Contact us to learn more about how Systems Thinking and the application of our Product Development Operating System can help your organization become more efficient, productive, innovative, and competitive.
Follow Bill at http://www.twitter.com/systhinking
Today’s post is a blog entry we swiped from Bettina Giemsa and the PTC Community blog. Not only is it a great topic, she also references our good friend and customer Doug Hippe from Extreme Tool and Engineering.
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“Vacation? No, thanks. I am too busy.”
Sounds familiar?
Certainly not. Nobody would EVER voluntarily drop their vacation.
But let’s not talk about your next trip to a sunny beach, but about training. Following my most recent blog Training? No thanks. I am too busy., our customer Doug Hippe sent me a private message here on PTC Community with his comments and this conversation is the reason I am writing a follow-up post now…
Doug wrote: “I’d like to add to your post on training. I too hear this same response from people when I suggest training. I routinely respond that we find time to remake or re-do something and we find time for employees to go on vacation, how is it we are too busy to train? While this doesn’t work with everybody, it makes them pause and think.”
I absolutely like this comparison! I sometimes find it hard to find time for training myself (yes, Marketers have busy schedules, too) and I am under massive pressure every time I go on vacation – delegate things, finish up open projects, etc. Then, when I come back I am facing a flood of emails to work through and that immediately throws me back to real life…
Despite the mess before and after, however, nobody would ever say “no, I won’t go on vacation because I need to focus on my work”.
Vacation is immediate personal benefit — you need to recharge your batteries and nobody would doubt the necessity. The issue with training is that people do not see it as a personal benefit right away – for most, it is “just” work-related. People see it rather as an additional task than a merit and this is where I believe we need to change our thinking.
For us as employees, an official training course is also a personal benefit in many ways:
- It is an opportunity to grow and become a more valuable employee for the current or even future employers.
- It will allow us to do our work more easily and make it more enjoyable. Most of you will agree that being able to do something well and getting recognized for this is really a great feeling.
- Last but not least, by being able to complete your work in a more efficient way and without re-work, workarounds or error-fixing, you can save yourself many fire-drills and have an overall more relaxed work atmosphere.
I have had employers in the past who didn’t offer much training — and thus no real growth perspectives. It ended with me quitting the job and looking for new perspectives. This changed when starting with ITEDO where workforce development was taken very seriously and when we were acquired by PTC in 2006, I got access to even more development options that I am still enjoying today. So basically, I have seen both sides and absolutely see the personal benefit of being trained on a regular basis.
I would even be willing to complement a good training opportunity with some of my spare time — such as travel early on a Sunday afternoon to a seminar or do some homework for a class in the evening when the kids are in bed. Would you agree?
Why don’t you talk to a Training Advisor to get an overview of the training options that are available from PTC University today. We look forward to hearing from you!
Bettina
PS: I also like going on vacation, but haven’t finalized plans for this summer yet — simply had no time — yet.
“I’m just too busy.” I hear this phrase every single week from my customers and prospects. That followed by, “There’s no time for another meeting, we’re up to our neck in new design projects, it’s our busy season so we can’t even think about implementing another system, and we’re way too busy for training.”
For so long, I’ve equated success with being busy until I read this quote by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, “A man who is very busy seldom changes his opinions.” I’d like to think there is a parallel between being busy and product development. Professionals in Product Development are paid to change things, to push the envelope, and to challenge the cadence of our weekly schedules.
EAC offers LEAN Product Development seminars in different cities throughout the year. These seminars are packed with executives eager to learn the latest and greatest in LEAN theory. The executives in the room listen attentively as they begin to imagine how their organization can operate as a learning organization.
I often wonder what would happen if our keynote speaker (our fearless LEAN evangelist) stood up in the front of the room and told the audience to focus on learning for the remainder of the week. He would order VPs, Directors, and CEO’s to take their teams offsite while putting their backlog of projects, design review meetings, and production schedules on hold. Of course, that’s neither reasonable nor realistic. But what if?
According to Michael Kennedy, “the greatest waste in the enterprise is the absence of sustained, real-time organizational learning, and very little effort is being applied for resolution.” Why aren’t we all working towards becoming a learning organization? By definition, a learning organization is one that has a heightened capability to learn, adapt, and change. Isn’t that what product development should embody?
I see mission statements that claim a commitment to continuous improvement yet haven’t invested in a class in years. We find the money for new tools, but we can’t take time to learn how to use them. We invest in new product development, yet we don’t educate our people on the fundamental process behind it. Most importantly, we don’t take time to learn from our own mistakes. Why? I think the answer is our own perceived success, our busyness!
As we begin the lazy days of summer, I encourage you to start small and embrace each day. Focus on one area of your work or personal life and take some time to learn how to improve. Invest in yourself, because you are your own most powerful tool. As Dr. Seuss taught us so well, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places
you’ll go.”
As summer finally inches closer, I can’t help but daydream about the rolling greens on a sunny golf course. I typically see golf as a chance to take a break from everyday thinking and recharge my batteries. However, on my last trip to the sand trap I realized that the process of golf is really quite complex.
Consider the process of a golf swing. First, you look at where the ball lies and Look where it needs to go. Then you Ask yourself what club might be best for the shot. Since most people don’t golf alone, you often discuss challenging parts of the course with other players or ask for tips for the best swing. After you determine your club, you will then visualize or Model what type of swing to use. Then, you Discuss (internally or with others) what you’ve learned and take a few practice swings. Finally you take Action and swing.
Although this process is usually subconscious and happens in just moments, it still is quite complicated. And guess what folks? This is problem solving at its greatest. This is LAMDA.
L: Look
A: Ask
M: Model
D: Discuss
A: Act
Although I use golf as a way to stop thinking about process, it turns out that it is truly inherent in nearly every part of my life. With the exception an occasional water hazard on the 9th hole, I consider myself a decent player and the LAMDA process promotes my continuous improvement. I’ll bet that you can also identify with this process. So, other than golf, what are processes in your life that model the LAMDA problem solving process?
