Category: management3.0

Happiness Door – How we doin?
agility · m3.0practices · management3.0

Happiness Door – How we doin?

Sumit SethiLeave a comment

Often when we meet people, we ask the common question of How are you; and while many don’t care about the answer, sometimes the answer defines the following conversation. Like if someone says that I’m doing not good, terrible headache. You might then ask, was last night drinks night?

Same way we often want to know the other person mood before we start a conversation. How many of us have been the victim of a bad mood; where we have gone to a person thinking of negotiation and based on the other person mood, we’ve returned thinking; now’s not the right time.

The Happiness Door is another practice I use at times to sense the mood of the room either during start or beginning of an activity/event or both at start and end.

I’ve used this many time, and I get surprised every time hearing people, but makes it so useful for me because I know where I am starting from, or how my event/activity went and where I’m ending at.

I start this activity with giving each person a Post-it (could be a normal 3*3 post-it, or a shape post it, or a cloud post-it (like you see in the image) ) and a Pen ( again could be colors/sketch pen/normal ball pen). I then tell them to either draw a face / figure / cartoon which tells their current mood.

Sometimes I define the three states (putting post-in of a happy smiley, a average smiley and a sad smiley), or in some cases I don’t define any state and leave the door empty(mostly I do this).

People are confused at first generally, if they are doing this for the first time, so with groups who are doing this the first time, I usually start with myself.

Using the smiley face drawn I describe how I’m feeling. For example, a person might say “I have a curious smiley because I am curious what Sumit is going to do in this event”. If it’s a new team I ask them to tell their names as well, and then tell about mood. Some people like to choose just some words like I’m curious or I’m happy, whereas some people like to tell stories like they were feeling hungry and the event is stopping them to have an early lunch.

The insights coming from doing this is valuable. If you see the image, this is from a big leadership meeting I had. I was introducing 4 major changes in the way we function, and I knew that people will be looking to oppose/challenge me. This activity in the start gave me a good idea, who was excited, who was not, who was willing to commit, who had confusions, who needed the push. At times getting this in the starting is so good as a facilitator as it tells you the mood, and often it makes us feel that the change we are about to bring is easy or tough for audience to accept; or does it need a little more explanation for some area.

While doing a culture-based event, from Happiness Door I came to know how people were really interested in the session because they saw the Lego boxes on their seats. In one of the Retro, I came to know how people Hated the session because last 2 Retro action items were not honored. You also come to know when people were forced to come to a session using the happiness door.

Now let’s switch gears on using this practice towards the end of the event/activity. At the end of the activity/event, it is more useful. It tells me how the people brought the idea. It tells me how people perceived the ideas that were shared. Often more than the smiley their body language tells me that they got excited or bored. As a facilitator it’s the perfect way to get instant feedback, it’s literally live feedback from audience.

I’ve seen people say that the culture Lego piece they build made them emotional, I’ve heard people say that they got very involved in the activity. Often people tell that they came thinking a very different thing, and they are leaving with something else. I’ve got people speak their mind like what they thought was their aha moment.

Again, just re-iterating the fact that feedback for any session/change is critical, and the Happiness Door not only gives the feedback, it gives the emotion, the mood, the change the event brought, the emotions people came with and much more, making it super effective and very useful.

I recommend any Change Agent to effectively use this and they will surely see amazing results!

If you want If you want to learn more about Happiness Door, you can look at the management 3.0 page here on the same.

Update: So, one of my friends reminded me of another implementation of happiness door I had done some time back. A Lego Human consists of 4 pieces (head, legs, body, head gear (could be just hair or a cap or helmet). I kept these at different places in the room. So, like 1 bunch of all legs at one place, and so on. I told people coming to the meeting to pick 1 piece from each pile and make a human. People were surprised/amazed, but Lego is interesting for all ages (trust me on this one). Now once they assembled their human, I told them to move the hands of the human or legs and tell what’s their mood while starting the session. I got people to make the Lego sit down and say we are relaxed and looking forward, someone made the person curious (again Lego can’t do that action, you need to speak). But with Lego in their hands I could see the excitement, and the legs and hands were used a lot. We did the same during checkout which was so awesome. The little experiment worked nice and I could see people interpret so much just by using the hands and legs of Lego. I remember one checkout Lego was walking person, where the person said, “We got a lot of inputs, time to walk and act”. Super interesting.

Competency Matrix and How we make teams grow on Competency
agility · m3.0practices · management3.0

Competency Matrix and How we make teams grow on Competency

Sumit Sethi2 Comments

When we start working in our career, I think one of the first questions which comes to every person is what he knows or what we can work on. The answer could be technical competency like .net/Azure or could be a soft skill like public speaking or could be a subject matter thing like working on a system. All this can be called as the competencies.

Learning was always a passion for me as I grew in my career, and while we grow up, we feel we might have to learn less, we get challenged more, and the learning never stops. As I heard from one of my co-speakers in a conference Rich, we live in a VUCA world, so what we hear today might not be relevant 3 years down the line, which Is unbelievable but true.

I remember in my second company, one of the managers tried to collect competency levels (not the competency; that he defined himself, but just the levels) and it got a very negative feedback. People complained his boss that he was trying to shame people, and the whole exercise of collection was told to be never done in public. The manager had to apologize to some folks who felt bad and then the whole activity was done in 1-1’s. Traditionally competency management was always done, but it was a private thing, and then it wasn’t even shared with the team, because I heard once that Competitor might get it and pull people from company based on their competency levels. And we being developers back then used to think less of it.

Now when I did my management 3.0 workshop with Sarika, I heard about the Competency matrix, and I surely thought it’s very useful. But I remember her saying the team needs to have Psychological safety to do this. And I thought that it should not be that tough. Believe me, I never thought what all could I face, and no training prepares you for that. The people we get in real life while doing a practice are different than what you imagine, and that’s part of the game.

Now I remember preparing my first competency exercise, and kind of doing a role play. I knew at once, that it had to be gamified. No way a person will tell competency on where he/she is and go away, this needs more fun, this needs more intent clarification, this needs more purpose. I don’t remember it was a suggestion, but I got the aspect of growth inside the activity where people would tell where they want to grow. Also, I thought just doing on a board with marker might make it boring, so I ordered 3M flags. I also ordered some 4*4 for people to write names.

With gamification I didn’t want to lose the intent but have people more involved with what they are doing and be present in the room and the activity. In the end what I noticed was that the gamification helped them be more attentive.

So the activity started with a 15 minutes talk on what are competencies, what kind of competencies could exist ( like domain, technology, tools, process, soft skills ), and then make them realize the activity meant to collect this in a way where we as a team can reflect on where we are, and then individually we identify 3 competency where we want to grow. I took a color of blue for marking where we want to grow. I explained them the intent couple of times, because I don’t want the safety aspect out of picture.

This first 15 minutes was my testing period where I got questions of very high intensity. “Will we be fired based on this”, “Will our team change post this”, “What happens if I am bad at everything”, “I’m not sure where I am”, and many more questions which tested my maturity and knowledge. I was strong and was able to answer them in a way that the audience felt safe but said that I knew I had to grow stronger for coming sessions (I’ve done 9 till date).

The activity was done in a way where they first drew their face in a 4*4 post-it (yes you read that right, they drew), I thought name is too straight forward, why not draw. And I got people showing their creative side. Some drawings were so amazing that when they were stuck on the board on the columns, it made that board attractive (See images below for my favorite 3 drawings). Then as a team everyone came and identified competencies. This was a team defining the competency which made them think on what next is coming in market, what they know, where they want to grow. In my first 15 minutes I told them “We win as a team, there are no individual wins”, that’s the feeling I wanted to see here, and I was happy the team was good in this.

So, while getting approval from management, management had a fear what if I hired the person for Java, and the team didn’t put that, which I know sounds funny, but trust me could be true when the team is having some fun. So as part of the activity, I made a pact, that when team is done with competency, I’ll call manager for 5 minutes to check if the defined competency has the core competency or not. If not, we’ll add it.

Now when the team was done with competency and manager verification of competency. I asked them to roll 2 dices. Get 1 Six on either dice to get a turn, and the first two people who get turn go on the board. Again, now people mark their competency level with the team discussion, and as a team they define themselves to be an apprentice, journeyman and master (I did give them details on what all 3 means during the starting 15 minutes). Once they are done putting the right color flag against competency, they take 3 blue flag and put it against the things they want to learn or grow on. This was taken very positive, it was like telling the management, we want to grow here. Trust me it amazes me how much everyone was happy about it.

In my first session I was out of flags, so we ended up using marker, but later I ordered more flags. The more I did this activity, I felt psychological safety is such a big deal. Employees need to feel safe in order to do anything like this. Thankfully at least I felt I gave them that environment (the reality lies with the people who were in the session)

Looking at the whole activity, I feel it makes a team come together in a good way. They feel like 1 team delivering quality output and they self-organize on competency which is a great thing to see live.

I feel this tested me as a facilitator to the core and I felt that only if you are confident you should do this, else I would role play and try to answer all possible question.  I felt super happy about the gamification and how it engaged the crowd. In the end, it’s all about where we are, where we want to grow and how we are fine with standing in front of the team and accepting it.

Below are 3 boards I felt which might give a good idea of the end result. Obviously I digitize this and then we get the manager need on each and then finish the activity.

I once even took the challenge of doing this for 2 teams together which was tough on me as a facilitator, but still the session went fine. Thank god I could do it in 1 single room. See below for the picture during the same:

If you want to learn more about Competency Matrix, you can look at the management 3.0 page here on the same.

Update (6thAug2020) : Living in the VUCA world, we all are in middle of a pandemic, so I as a facilitator was forced to create a template to do this activity online. And I feel we all should share, and with that spirit sharing my template I created for the same : https://app.mural.co/template/5319b025-999b-41f1-a0c7-1021dbabf766/96ca6dd1-aca0-4b88-a84a-be8a3f485e17

Hope this help! 🙂

Niko-Niko – The Emotional Calendar
agility · m3.0practices · management3.0

Niko-Niko – The Emotional Calendar

Sumit Sethi1 Comment

When I saw Niko-Niko recently in the management 3.0 practices, it reminded me of the emotional seismograph I do during release retrospective. I will explain more on the emotional seismograph later, but the Niko-Niko looked like an amazing way to constantly capture the mood of the people.

The practice is very simple where a person while leaving office tells the mood he/she is leaving with. Either the whole teams do it together describing the mood in few words if possible, or worse case you just mark it in the public visible calendar. Some people use colors, others just update the box with smiley. This time I gave them the choice to choose colors.

The intent is very clear; we want to know the emotional sentiment of the team as they work. Scrum Teams work as a team which rallies around work or in a typical sprint around the goal, and a team having team members unhappy some days in a row is alarming. While I often tell managers not to challenge people on why they are happy, I tell them to look at trends or the patterns.

While introducing the technique 1 challenge I faced was some people telling to remove the names. I’ve removed the names in the image for Confidentiality, but if you see on the left names are written for each person inside the scrum team (I do it scrum team wise, but actually can be done at any level). The thing I explain people is that if I feel that people telling how their day went can’t be public, there is another issue which needs to be solved. It means people are not safe. Safety is a bigger issue to address. If my teams are not safe to reveal this, I’ll have that issue resolved first, because psychological safety is priority for me. So I’m always able to convince people that let there be names, because people feel safe, and if they are not, then that team needs attention from a different perspective.

One day before sprint end, probably everyone is busy, and expecting a good day is tough, and same way the second day of the sprint is probably good for everyone. Again, these observations might be wrong generalizations and I believe data should speak for itself. Again, this data is so unique with each team, and with everyone. You don’t get to hear a story or a reason, but then the objective data is enough to identify if the team is in stress, or if an employee is feeling too bad.

The patterns are often useful in 1-1 conversations or even tea conversations. I’ve even seen team mates talk to each other, what happened dude, you are having bad days every day. And it’s good because as human beings it’s good that we try to be happy, but it also makes sense for us to show empathy if someone else is not.

I take the monthly data and try to get patterns and share that with leadership. A Team recently was stretching a lot, and I could see constant full team bad moods, and while talking to some folks, I could easily figure it out. I gave the feedback to them to slow down. Again, the idea is to get inference and do something on inference. It should have some intent and purpose attached.

Often a blank sheet gives more noise.

In same way the emotional seismograph Is what I do at every release retrospective, where I make a line graph, plotting a sad and happy smiley on y axis, and then on x axis either keeping sprints or months (depending on size of release). I start the release retrospective using this, where I tell people to draw points and hence connect points to get a line showing how their release went from a team perspective. It solves multiple purpose, firstly I tell them that while you are drawing your line, think about all the sprints, kind of self-reflect because it is a release retro and they need to think about the entire release. It also shows the emotional quotient of the team. If you see in middle of the release the line going to sad for majority, something happened. If the ending of the release was ending for everyone at a low, something bad happened in the end. And intent is for people to get these points in their mind for the next activities. Again, I’ve done this at least 40 times, and every time it teaches me things.

The Human sentiments is a powerful thing not because humans are sensitive, but because the sensitivity drives the passion, the behaviors and they tell how we will work. A happy employee is what everyone wants, but we need to know if they are unhappy and act accordingly.

Happiness is a big thing.

If you want to learn more about Niko-Niko calendar, you can look at the management 3.0 page here on the same.

Moving Motivators and how the motivators Move
agility · m3.0practices · management3.0

Moving Motivators and how the motivators Move

Sumit SethiLeave a comment

What motivates you in life is important, and you knowing what motivates you is more important. Often, it’s like the things which makes you happy, while there may be others which really don’t matter much in life.

Whenever people ask this question what motivates you, trust me money comes in mind the first for most of the people. You might not say it as it doesn’t look good, but yes, money does motivate. Is it the only thing, a big NO.

There is a famous Dan Pink video which shows that at some point, giving more money works the other way, which is surprising but true. Money motivates till money is a factor on the table, once you take it off the table, there are many other things. And then it cites some examples like development of Linux where people made it for free, but the motivation was very high. They had their jobs but developed a free operating system. Big motivations often come from passion people have.

Coming to the IT world, I remember my initial discussions with a mentor asking me what motivates me. For me it’s probably been Mastery and my goal. But again, motivators are not constant. What motivates me today, might not motivate me when I become CEO.

Coming to Management 3.0 “Moving Motivators”; When I introduce the game, I often see people getting confused with the images and the text of the cards we distribute (You can see in the image). I tell them not to worry because every individual has his own interpretation of an image or some text. Something like Power might mean that I can control things around; for someone it could be that he has authority to take decisions and for someone could mean being a CEO. So, the words and their meanings are not important, but it’s the underlying story which is important.

I start by telling people to order the motivators from left to right thinking about their whole life keeping the left most which is least significant motivator to the right most telling the most significant one. I pair them up and let them describe in groups how the motivators motivate them in real life. Then I tell them to think about last quarter and move 2 cards up which are high motivators currently and 2 down which are least. I’ve seen some of their high motivators go down, which is interesting. Imagine something is a high motivator for me in life, but in the last quarter it was my least motivating thing. Some powerful stuff.

In one variation, I again make pairs and let them tell stories in the room to everyone. In another variation, I make triads, and tell them to get me a real-life story of how they show that the motivator is a big motivator for them.

One thing I realized in time is how they take this back and use it, so post 2 initial such sessions, I introduced a section where I ask them (not me telling because I was doing this initially) on how they can use this information for themselves or others. It’s like first telling I can use my motivator in such way, and then they are telling about a friend “Now that I know his motivator is xyz, I can do abc”. And this is very effective, because it tells how they can really use it. Makes them understand it very well. I’ve seen people take notes which doing this.  

I remember in one of my leadership trainings in GE, there was this activity on StrenghFinder (there was a book as well). The book explained well how finding your strengths and using them to your benefit is important. This runs for me on similar lines.

Again, the more I do this and hear stories, I realize how motivators are so important for people, and I see people going beyond the call of duty to really work hard if they are given their motivators. For example I saw one of the guy had acceptance as  a motivator, and people around used to constantly doubt him, post the session we saw people giving him the right acceptance, and showing some level of trust, which made him work harder and it was a win-win situation where the team was happy to see him perform well and he was happy to get the acceptance from the team he wanted.

Would recommend this activity for any team and especially new managers to play with their team, or team plays with themselves too. It makes you open with the team, and the story-telling makes it very powerful.

If you want to learn more about Moving Motivators, you can look at the management 3.0 page here on the same.