DO WORK SON.
Now is an exciting time to be a part of the Probity team.
We have made attempts at remote, collaborative productivity tracking – but everything up to now has slowly died out and as a group we have not consistently adopted a method that is sustainable and optimal.
I have a great feeling about our newest attempt to establish a functional productivity ritual.
Last summer, we utilized two methods in order to get things done and share our progress on a daily basis: Huddle and the Pomodoro Technique. It went really well, but it required me to be a hound and a micro manager at times in order to spur the rest of the team to share their daily tasks and track how many Pomodoros they got done on a given day – to be fair, I never had that problem with Mike, haha.
The system was solid, and it’s really incredible to look back at the summer and review that data and realize how powerful quantifying and qualifying productivity can be. It is in part why we decided to have our first project be a productivity application. It also inspired each of us to be accountable to what we wanted to get done at the beginning of the day, and report back on what was actually accomplished at the end of it. You learn a lot by doing this, about your habits and tendencies as it relates to distractions and efficiency, and you also become much more aware of what your team members are working on as well – especially since a lot of what we do is remote.
It was a good run, but as I mentioned, we slowly ceased to track our progress. We eventually allowed ourselves to forget that we had a good thing going, and yet again silo our productivity behavior.
Today, we decided to recommit – and this time we’ve got our guns loaded.
Huddle was a bit robust for our tastes, but it had a nice environment that made it extremely easy to share and collaborate on documents – which we used to track pomodoros and action items. The Pomodoro Technique is great for some things, but a lot of what we ended up doing on a day to day basis didn’t always fit in with the confines of how the technique was meant to be applied. In understanding all of this – we have chosen to establish a new set of rituals that we have designed in a way where there are both consequences and rewards.
We have decided to meet via phone daily at 7:30AM for no more than fifteen minutes and have a daily standup session of sorts. We will share with the team what we plan on doing for the day, as well as report on anything noteworthy from the previous day. In addition to this we will utilize Pivotal Tracker to share our tasks with each other, and receive reports and updates on each other’s process on a day to day basis. This solution is a bit leaner than huddle, is free, and we’ve been using it to manage a number of projects over the past four months or so.
So that sounds good, right? But how can we actually insure that we all do that everyday, without fail? This is a huge issue and it is a problem we ran into regularly when we last attempted a system in which we had a group accountability process. So in addition to designing an approach for what we hope to all do regularly, we’ve added an accountability layer in the form of rules and consequences for failing to follow them.
Here’s how it works:
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Call Neal by 7:30am. Late is FAIL. No excuses accepted.
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Five To-Do Items Max, 3 to-do items minimum. BRIEF.
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All to-do items must be recorded on Pivotal Tracker BEFORE the 7:30am meeting. NO FREESTYLING.
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Meetings consist of listing of to-do items for the day for each person.
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By the time of the next meeting, action must be taken on PivotalTracker, either Complete or Comment with WHY it has not been completed.
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Failure to meet any of these rules will result in the following Consequences:
Level 1: Frame+Matte Print of a Probity Icon (8 1/2 x 11) ON THE WALL.
Level 2: Mexicana Shakes for the team from Medici
Level 3: Five Star Bar burgers for the team
Level 4: All-you-can-eat Sushi for the team
Level 5: Mantle Probity logo on the wall in the office
- If the consequence is not redeemed within one week of assignment, then the consequence advances to the next level.
Now our consequences and levels may not make total sense to you, but don’t worry about that. The reason I am sharing this is to document our commitment as well as inspire my readers to consider a system that not only facilitates an ideal interaction with one’s team, but is designed in a way that provides accountability that is group enforced as opposed to just an individual watchdog. I love how it plays into our desire for competition but at the same time is based on a collaborative framework.
I’m giddy. This’ll be fun.