Changing the Government

Government agencies are some of the most notorious change resistors. In 1999, the Mint started to change that reputation – receiving a customer satisfaction rating second only to Mercedes Benz.

“In the old days, we shipped fewer than 50% of our orders within eight weeks. Today, if it takes two weeks for customers to receive an order, they complain. When you change expectations, it’s very hard for an organization to relax and slip back into old patterns of behavior.”– Philip N. Diehl, Director of the United States Mint

If the Mint couldn’t survey its customers officially, Diehl himself would do so unofficially. A few weeks after joining the Mint, he embarked on his own personal fact-finding mission. He went to coin conventions, talked with the hobby press, found situations in which he could interact with collectors. He shunned the ceremonial role that the director of the Mint usually played at these functions (collectors would line up to ask for Diehl’s autograph), and did what any smart politician (and change agent) would do: He worked the room.

Continued in Mint Condition from Fast Company

Thanks to Frank Patrick for the tip.

Usability Not Usable? – Part 2

“People are usually not receptive to a newcomer waltzing in and telling them they’ve been doing their jobs wrong.”

Usability departments exist in a number of our client organizations. Unfortunately, their organizational structural frequently instills an adversarial relationship between the project teams and usability group. The usability group is considered an outside agency – ony evaluating ‘ready for prime time’ work.

This relationship places the usability professional in the lose-lose position of telling the project team their baby is ugly.

Here are 3 tips for making this process more valuable for everyone:

  1. Invite everyone in all the project meetings from the start. This includes developers, usability professionals, project sponsors, clients, and even a customer or two. (and make the meetings working meetings)
  2. Evaluate early and often. The earlier in the project customer insight is captured, the more valuable is it to the project (and the customer). The project is less malleable as time progresses, more decisions (good & bad) have been made, more constraints exist. Everyone learns from early evaluation.
  3. Create, don’t just destroy. Usability evalutions are most valuable and insightful when participants are offered alternatives to compare. Perhaps alternatives don’t exist for the initial evaluation session, but they surely exist for each additional. To make the most of the evaluations the learnings from each session to the next participant in the form of a rough prototype.

The quote beginning this post is from from Ester Derby’s article Change that Fits. Her story describes a recently-fired software development quality engineer. Usability professionals should heed warning.

How to Stifle Teamwork

As an appetizer for an upcoming Work Better article on collaboration techniques, I’m pleased to present these team work worst practices from Ester Derby’s Software Managemet Process Improvement weblog:

A clear strategy to stifle teamwork

Establish two classes of membership on the team [WP NOTE: i.e. developers and testers, employees and contractors, or people with technical focus and people with business focus] , then follow these steps to ensure that all are aware of the distinction

3) Hold meetings to discuss project business, and exclude the 2nd class team members. If they ask to attend, tell them the meetings are to discuss topics they don’t need to know about… or say “This is meeting is only for 1st class team members.”?

4) Swap in new 2nd class staff frequently (2nd class team member are fungible, afterall, unlike more important 1st class team members). This is a double-header strategy – it slows down progress, too!

8) Blame the 2nd class when the so-called team fails to work together effectively…“They just don’t understand how to work as part of a team.”?

For all 8 helpful hints, visit A clear strategy to stifle teamwork.

As illustrated by this article, teams are about quality interpersonal relationships. If the office culture doesn’t support building collaborative relationships – failure is imminent. For the project, the team, and the organization.

Mobile Phone Etiquette Tips

SprintPCS has partnered with etiquette expert Jacqueline Whitmore to compile an excellent list of 10 mobile phone etiquette tips

Number 1…

Let your voicemail take your calls when you’re in meetings, courtrooms, restaurants and other busy areas. If you must speak to the caller, excuse yourself and find a secluded area where you can talk

Thank you SprintPCS for publishing this list. It should be distributed with every mobile phone sold.

Usability Not Usable? Part 1

Conventional wisdom states that websites and other new products should be evaluated with non-tech savvy participants. With 63% of American adults accessing the Internet regularly, 83% of teens, and 20% of adults actively avoiding the online world we are a nation of tech-savvy or tech-avoidant. Conventional recruiting strategies not longer apply.

Rather than pursue an audience that is actively avoiding technology, we recommend iteratively evaluating new products with the expert customers – the professional amateurs. Professional Amateurs have done the competitve research, they know what works for them, and best of all – they’re passionate and articulate.

Benchmarking and evaluting with a novice customer-base provide a rear-view mirror description of where your competitors were. The key to surpassing the competition in the technically sophisticated landscape described above is listening to the needs of your professional amateurs – those customers engaging with your products on a daily basis. By paying close attention to their needs, opportunities will be obvious. As an added benefit, it will only strengthen your relationship with them.

The Sidewalk Pitch

Help us defeat George Bush.

or

Do you have a moment for Greenpeace?

You’re running late for a meeting, which of these lines stops you?

Political activist recruiters are on the Nicollet Avenue street corners this summer . Last week it was the Democratic National Committee and this week – Greenpeace.

One of the volunteer coordination tips I learned from Camp Wellstone:

Get potential volunteers to say ‘Yes’.

The another is be specific and compelling. The Greenpeace representatives are doing neither. They’re offering me – and everyone else an early out.

On the other hand, I congratulated the DNC rep on his compelling sidewalk pitch.

Repeating the Same Action and Expecting a New Result?

Engagement at meetings and excitement about projects is down. A number of key people are leaving. The passion that sparked our initial conversations is waning. One of our clients is at a turning point with their organization.

A number of never-been-tried-by-us suggestions were thrown around in a recent strategy session. Most of them immediately dismissed with a quick “that may work for some organizations, but not us.”

We talked about a number of approaches that could provide more value to their customers and more energy to their organization – from repositioning their offering to bringing on some lower-level individuals to assist management to really fulfilling on their unique selling propsition.

The resistance to change – when survival is most in question – is not unique to organizations. BusinessPundit struggles with the issue of a resistance manager and Seth Godin discovers the same issue when offering suggestions on improving presentations .

We at Working Pathways offer 2 suggestions for approaching a new strategy:

  1. Have you and your team answer this question, “What’s the worst possible outcome?”Answer it for your current situation and any potential strategy. New directions are never as forboding as existing strategies.
  2. The most successful, maintainable strategy is doing as little as possible

Daily Productivity Tips

We’re working with a number of clients to make their days more effective. One of the smallest, yet most profound changes is making each meeting a working meeting. Though powerful and effective, this technique does go against more than 96 years of conventional wisdom

This technique works especially well for document review meetings – have an attendee, you?, make the changes discussed as they’re decided upon. At the end of the meeting, the document is updated – no longer hanging over anyone’s head.

Another tip – before scheduling an in-person meeting, ask yourself what the quickest, easiest way to accomplish the purpose of the meeting. Can the 1o-member project kick-off meeting be handled through email? Probably. Can a decision be reached by a couple of phone calls? Probably.

Over at Worthwhile Magazine, Anita Sharpe highlights a couple other tips for getting time back on your side.